Goodbye, Mr. Bush
By Sidney Blumenthal
Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government’s departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.
The more rigid the current president is in responding to the chaos he has fostered, the more the Republicans still supporting him rally around him as a pillar of strength. His flat learning curve, refusal to admit error and redoubling of mistakes are regarded as tests of his strong character. Whatever his low poll ratings of the moment, his stubborn adherence to failure is admired as evidence of his potency.
The patently perverse notion that weakness is strength is the basis of Bush’s remaining credibility within his party. His abuse of presidential power is seen as his great asset rather than understood as his enduring weakness. But when the president assumes all the responsibility, he also receives all the blame, which becomes unitary and unilateral. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated the constitutional principle in the 1952 Youngstown Steel case: "When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system."
In his waning year, Bush is pointedly indifferent to the predictable consequences of his collapse. According to those who have met with him recently, he envisions himself as a noble idealist having made moral decisions that will vindicate him generations from now.Despite the obvious shortcomings of his policies, he has startlingly succeeded in reshaping the executive into an unaccountable imperial presidency. And Bush’s presidency is now accepted as the only acceptable version for major Republican candidates who aspire to succeed him. All of them have pledged to extend its arbitrary powers. Their embrace of the imperial presidency makes the 2008 election a turning point in constitutional government.
This campaign pits two parties running on diametrically opposite ideas of the presidency and the Constitution. There has not been such a sharp divergence on the foundation of the federal system since perhaps the election of 1860.
Two models of the presidency are at odds, one whose founding father was George Washington, the other whose founding father was Richard Nixon. Under the aegis of Dick Cheney, who considered the scandal in Watergate to be a political trick to topple Nixon, the original vision has been entrenched and extended. Cheney is the pluperfect staff man, beginning as Donald Rumsfeld’s assistant in the Nixon White House, and was aptly code-named "Backseat" by the Secret Service when he pulled the strings in the Ford White House as chief of staff. For Cheney and the president under his tutelage, eagerly acting as "The Decider" on decision memos carefully packaged by "Backseat," the Constitution is a defective instrument remedied by unlimited executive power.
Like Nixon, Bush and Cheney act on the idea that the more they operate outside the constitutional system, the stronger they are. But, unlike Nixon, they are willfully contemptuous of facts and evidence, believing that unfettered power gives them the authority to create or impose their own. Bush and Cheney have refined and simplified Nixon’s concept, purging it of his realism and flexibility. There will be no opening to Iran as there was an opening to China. In Bush’s imperial presidency, neoconservatism meets Nixonianism, the ideology providing the high concept of low politics.
In ways that Nixon did not achieve, Bush has reduced the entire presidency and its functions to the commander in chief in wartime. And in order to sustain this role he has projected a never-ending war against a distant, faceless foe, ubiquitous and lethal. Fear and panic became the chief motifs substituting for democratic persuasion to engineer the consent of the governed, as Jack Goldsmith, Bush’s former director of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, explains in "The Terror Presidency." He writes, "Why did the administration so often assert presidential power in ways that seemed unnecessary and politically self-defeating? The answer, I believe, is that the administration’s conception of presidential power had a kind of theological significance that often trumped political consequences."…
Now, on a personal note, I have reached the end of my critique of the Bush administration, having elaborated it for years. (In fact, my book on "The Strange Death of Republican America" will be published in April 2008.) As events continue to unfold there will undoubtedly be many more things to say about Bush, Cheney, their administration and the Republican field. But given the momentous stakes, I have decided that nothing is more important than committing myself wholly to the outcome. Therefore, beginning here, the tone changes. Readers know of my background in the Clinton White House. (See "The Clinton Wars.") They are familiar with my long friendship with Sen. Hillary Clinton. When she recently asked me to join her campaign as senior advisor I felt I must accept, though not out of obligation but, rather, wholeheartedly. There will be other times and places for me to explain how I have seen her grow into the person I now feel is best qualified and suited to restore the presidency, an office I observed and participated in for four years and about whose nature, I know from working closely with her, she has a deep grasp.
I believe that the reason the Republicans have promoted the talking point that Hillary is unelectable is that they fear that more than any other candidate she can create a majority coalition, win and govern. They fear more than loss in one election; they fear the end of the Republican era beginning with Nixon. They know that she has the knowledge, skill and ability to govern. They know that she has already taken everything they can throw against her and is still standing.
Just as the disintegration of the Democrats brought about the rise of the Republicans, the collapse of the Republicans has created an opening for the Democrats. But the Democrats have been victims of their own false euphoria, sanctimony and illusions before. Now, only the Democrats can revive the Republicans. Nixon, Reagan and Bush were all beneficiaries of Democratic disarray and strategic incompetence. The Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory before and it can happen again, even under these circumstances, when history is turning the Democrats’ way.
The Democrats at key junctures have been seduced by the illusion of anti-politics to their own detriment. Anti-politics upholds a self-righteous ideal of purity that somehow political conflict can be transcended on angels’ wings. The consequences on the right of an assumption of moral superiority and hubris are apparent. Their plight stands as a cautionary tale, but not only as an object lesson for them. Still, the Republican will to power remains ferocious. The hard struggle will require the most capable political leadership, willing to undertake the most difficult tasks, and grace under pressure.
And goodbye to you, Sydney Bumenthal. We’ll sure miss you. There’s been no voice in our cadre of journalists so clear, or so surgically right than yours. It’s hard to imagine another year without the periodic voice of sanity you’ve interjected into the devisive and sometimes psychotic dialogue that passes for political discourse during this Bush Era. I hope your wisdom and insights serve Ms. Clinton as well in the coming 431 days as they have served us in the last several trying years…
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