When you look at the history of our country, and you look at the Presidents involved, you'll note a couple of things if you're at all perceptive.
Presidential power is controlled by Congress and the Senate, and by the Courts. They don't agree with what's going on, and it doesn't get done. The President can cajole, persuade, and even (it's suspected) bribe and blackmail - but it takes all three branches of government to get stuff done.
The second thing you'll note is that Presidents who don't do much while in office aren't fondly remembered, if they're remembered at all. Warren G. Harding, for example, is pretty notable for his sex scandals and corruption in the White House (Hmmm, remind you of anyone recent?) but he didn't do much of anything legislative-wise. Nixon will be remembered for decades - like him or loathe him, you can't argue he sat in the Oval Office and did nothing.
History looks favorably on Presidents who attempt great things. Washington, Lincoln, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, GWBush... They took (and have taken) bold steps while in office to deal with problems their administrations ran into.
In my memory, the following Presidents hunkered down and let the problems wash over them, responding minimally (if at all) to events and situations they needed to take action on. Johnson, Ford, Carter, GHWBush and Clinton all were faced with problems during their time in office - and failed to respond appropriately in many circumstances. In fact, it almost seems for some personality types that once they've climbed to the top of the heap (so to speak) they get into office and stop trying.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. After Johnson, we needed a president that would deal with the Vietnam War. Johnson wasn't it - he had too many troubles both domestically and abroad, and didn't deal with them terribly well. He DID come up with the 'Great Society' programs... but it's arguable that those had the hoped-for effect 40 years down the line. But at the point of Johnson's departure, the Vietnam scenario was cast - all Nixon could do was try to control things as it all fell apart for various reasons. (We won't go into those here.) After Nixon's problems, Ford had the choice of trying to be bold and decisive, or mark time off the calender until the next election. Carter got in, and then Disco took off. (I don't necessarily conflate the two, but it seems suspicous to me.) Carter tried a number of things, managed to get peace accords brokered between Israel and Egypt and got China to open up - but really didn't get much else accomplished when a recession hit, an energy crisis hit, and inflation soared. Again, I blame Disco for the last three. Carter was a good man, in a damn tough job, and I don't think he handled a lot of it terribly well, especially the economic, foriegn policy, and energy issues of the time. (The invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR and the Iranian hostage crisis are examples of that.)
Reagan did a lot in office, including a lot of stuff that got him roundly condemned by the Democrats and the media. 25 years later, his record doesn't look all that bad. GHWBush, however, more coasted than anything else. The collapse of the USSR and how well we did in GW1will be the memorable things from his term - and both those were much more Reagan's doing with the military buildup than anything he did on his watch. (However, he trusted the military to do the things needed to win Gulf War 1, which was more than Johnson did for Viet Nam.)
Clinton got in because folks wanted a change (and also, I think, because Perot got enough of the vote from disaffected Republicans) and that's what they got. However, his drawdown of the military wasn't seen as a terribly swift move. He did, however, keep his fingers out of economic issues, mostly, contributing to the boom of the '90s... and the ending recession when a lot of tech bubbles went bust. (It's hard to know what he could have done to prevent that, BTW.)
Now we've got Bush in. Perhaps in 20 years we'll be able to get a better perspective of the whole deal. But there's one thing that, in retrospect, seems clear to me.
A President has a lot of power. How he chooses to use that power is always going to be questioned by the other side. There's a lot of things that could or should be done, but few Presidents are willing to expend the political capital they have to do the things they need as they're needed. (Carter, when the energy crisis hit under his watch, could have (and probably should have) pushed for nuclear power - but the events at 3-Mile Island made that a political faux pas.) One of the things that we look for (and hope for) in a President is leadership. But being the leader sometimes requires you to make unpopular choices. The threat of action from the other side when they dislike the choices made will alway be a damper on the decision-making process.
Currently, Sen. Boxer is looking to file impeachment charges against Bush. This doesn't strike me as a timely, politcally responsible or terribly sensible move, but if she (and by extension the Democratic Party) do try this, I would expect that any future Presidents would be wary (if not downright reluctant) to attempt anything that might be considered the least bit risky or controversial politically, lest it draw mutterings about impeachement.
Think of it as the political equivalent of a bulldozer, or a wrecking ball - or the knife of a surgeon. I'm not saying impeachment should never be an option - but it has to be used very, very carefully and only where really appropriate. Otherwise, you risk destroying something you might really need later on.
J.
Comments (7)
At the moment, I cannot see how circumventing existing (and very tilted towards presidential power) law regarding wiretapping can possibly be legal. And it seems like many of your fellow conservatives (especially those that are connected enough to have been spied on, and to know about it) seem to share my concerns. I'm willing to wait until more facts come out before calling for impeachment (on these grounds), but if Bush did break the law to illegally spy on Americans... well, that's what impeachment is for. It sure is more impeachable than what Clinton got impeached for.
Posted by Jason | January 5, 2006 1:37 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 13:37
"Connected enough to have been spied upon"? I confess, I haven't seen any posts about that. Got a link? (If you post it, it'll probably get moderated. But I'll dig it out before the day's over.)
One thing I HAVE noticed, however, is that I don't understand a lot of what they're referring to. Thus, I'm leaving my analysis of the legal issues involved to sites like powerlineblog.com - where they've got folks a lot more familiar with legal matters than I am looking at the issue. The thing will boil down to, I think, whether he was really circumventing the law or not. I'm not willing to default to a "He's guilty" stance just because it's what the NYTimes and the DNC want me to believe.
But that's not what I was really writing about in the post. What I'm concerned with is in future administrations that EVERY controversial effort by a President is going to be met with threats of impeachment, and what that would do as far as chilling any sort of initiatives. It doesn't matter which party - the other side can always threaten to start impeachment proceedings.
Eisenhower started the Freeway system. What if he'd been impeached for it, or threatened with it, since it was an obvious waste of money? Kennedy really kicked NASA into high gear - what if Proxmire had been really rabid about it being a boondoggle and threatened impeachment? Or Dems during the Reagan years threatening him with impeachment for ratcheting up defense spending to insanely high levels, which would only antagonize the USSR?
I don't like seeing impeachment as a weapon to be used at any opportunity against Bush. First it was impeachment for misleading us about WMDs in Iraq. Now it's impeachement about this. I'm thinking that it's the wrong move at definitely the wrong time - but I understand the need of Boxer and others to grandstand on this. Heaven knows they've not got much else that's constructive going on and they've got to do SOMETHING.
J.
Posted by JLawson | January 5, 2006 3:48 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 15:48
I'm not assuming Bush is guilty, either, although it's easy to believe, because heaven knows Bush has discarded many (previously hailed by conservatives) legal principles in his expansion of executive power and privilege.
But the FISA law explicitly forbids wiretapping without a warrant (even a rubber-stamp FISA warrant), and Bush brazenly claims he has the authority to do so anyway.
He MIGHT be right. As Paul at Powerline argues, there may be details of the program that make FISA inapplicable. But (as Paul also argues) if it turns out that this is exactly the behavior FISA prohibits, Bush is declaring that he can break any laws that he does not interpret to be constitutionally valid. That is not a precedent that conservatives (in the pre-Bush sense of the word), especially, will be comfortable with.
(The only reason they've put up with with the rest of Bush's legal antics, I believe, is that they are Scared Out of Their Wits that the terrorists are gonna get 'em.)
P.S., I can't find the link to the thing I read this morning, but on related note, google up the transcript of Sundays Meet the Press, and Read what William Safire had to say about when he was wiretapped by the FBI.
Posted by Jason | January 5, 2006 5:02 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 17:02
I will take a step back from my usually anti-Bush stance here, just for a minute, to put this in some historical perspective. While the three branches are "co-equal", the legislature makes the laws, the judicial sorts them out, and the president ensures that they are executed.
It takes two branches to over-ride any third. Let's not forget that Andrew Jackson first drafted the quote "[The Supreme Court] has made [its] decision, now let [them] enforce it!"
I don't know how unconstitutional it is for a president to refuse to enforce laws. That's their power, to enforce or not enforce. So thats why Bush can't be cited for impeachment over the mine issue for example. (Lest you think I'm just pulling this out of my ass, the mine the miners were trapped in was cited for 200 violations and should have been closed, but the Bush administration didn't really take an aggressive stance on enforcing those laws.) But to enforce or not enforce is the right of the president.
However, I don't think this means the president can BREAK the law. I mean, that makes an interesting bit of politics. Since the president enforces the laws, he can theoretically break what ever law he wants, because he's the one who enforces it.
So long as he doesn't inspire congress to impeach him, the president CAN SERIOUSLY break any law he wants. Well... any FEDERAL law at least. If he were to break a state law, the states could try him on their own. I'm not sure if a president can pardon people who violate state laws, or just federal ones. Interesting things to look into.
But what this effectively means is that the judicial has very very little power over the executive on it's own, and the real tie-breaker is the legislature. The courts can rule whatever they want, and the president can choose to abide by the decisions or not. As long as the legislature goes along with it, the president is golden.
Whether it should or shouldn't be that way is not for me to decide obviously ;)
Posted by rawb | January 5, 2006 7:38 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 19:38
Thanks for your comments, Rawb.
Jason, the problem I'm having with the arguments that this falls under the FISA laws is that I've seen what seems authoritative commentary that it doesn't. This isn't, apparently, a traditional wiretap, and this method doesn't (apparently, from what I've read) come under the FISA purview. You can't call it a wiretap if there's no wire, and there's no tap. So what is it? It's classified. I've got a hazy idea of what it is, and that idea's likely to be wrong.
And I think, from what I've gathered reading in some of the more esoteric arguments on this that it's getting really deep into law and legalistic arguments, and I KNOW I don't have the background to opine on that.
So, I'll wait until competent legal authority declares on this - one without an axe to grind (hopefully) either way. Hell, I gave up trying to figure out law a long time back. I'm a tech, I fix computers. It's either broke or it isn't. I don't have to persuade a judge, I don't have to convince a jury, (but I do worry about precedent however) and at the end of the day all I have to do is make sure the customer gets fixed. There are things I've found it best to leave to experts, and two big things are surgery and law. (Also auto repair and tire installations. But those are minor.)
In fact, I think the legal system's developing into a defacto priesthood here in the US, but that's for another time.
Rawb, sounds like the enforcement agency got lazy re the mine thing. And that happens, whether you've got a Republican in the White House or not.
I'm not laying that one on the Bush administration - there were collapses under Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, and as far back as the history of mining in the US. Inspections don't always force closure. I ate at a fast-food burger joint one time, and on the way out I noticed it had a score of 31. Twelve hours later, after a considerable amount of regurgitation, I swore to ALWAYS check the inspection sheet first. I don't know what the score has to be in order to get a place shut down in GA, but as far as I'm concerned it should have been below 40.
As far as mine safety goes, it's easy to take an inspection report and say it should have been closed - but we don't know (once again) what the infractions were. Simply saying there were 200 doesn't mean much. What were they? No soap in the showers? Hot water too hot? Air exhausts too close to air intakes for mine ventilation? Power lines secured on 36 inch centers instead of 18? Personal rebreather masks haven't been inspected lately? There's a whole lot of things that I could think of that would be OSHA violations, from the trivial to the serious, from a lack of soap in the showers to improper drainage of waste water to insufficient shoring in the mine. There's not enough data to decide one way or the other on this.
I'm afraid I'm not going to take a reporter's word that an infraction is 'serious'. Not after Katrina.
But we'll see re Bush. I still maintain we don't know enough about the programs, or the legal issues involving them. We may NEVER know. I also think we've got way too many laws, and it's getting to a point where everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. I don't think I like that.
J.
Posted by JLawson | January 5, 2006 9:22 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 21:22
Re the mines:
I suppose I'm interested all of a sudden in whether the executive should be able to have any of his people in charge of the beaurocracy parts or not. The beaurocracy is meant to be separate from the executive and to do its job (enforce safety, etc etc) regardless of who's president.
I'm not sure whether the president should be the one to appoint the top people who then say whether they're going to enforce the rules over-strenuously (and probably catch a lot of small time infractions in their wide net) or if they want to be a little more lax and let these industries fix themselves a bit.
Obviously it has pro's and con's. If the beaurocracy becomes lazy with the president unable to affect change even when he wants to, that's no good. But it's also no good if people want to do their job but are being pressured to take their time. It'd also be no good if a president wanted to over-extend their capabilities and cite every single mine for tons of things and get them all closed down when they don't deserve to be so.
In short, I'm wondering where our beaurocracy fits in to american politics and where it should ;)
Posted by rawb | January 5, 2006 11:17 PM
Posted on January 5, 2006 23:17
We have an institutionalized bureaucracy inside the Beltway at this point - the Prez may change, but the momentum continues. Or not, as the case may be.
J.
Posted by JLawson | January 6, 2006 9:45 AM
Posted on January 6, 2006 09:45