GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power...ho
WSJ: You do?
GWB: Oh yeah, they can say "We won't fund." That is the constitutional authority of Congress.
His "theory" of government, and the more insidious, but no less radical theory of the Unified Executive, promulgated by John Yoo, are based upon very black and white notions of the powers that are attributed to the branches of government as written in the Constitution and interpreted over the history of the country. One historical event, though, seems to mirror their approach, namely FDR's court packing scheme, which was a similar attempt to deal with an intransigent branch of government that was standing in the way of unfettered executive process. Leave aside the very different motivations that were behind FDR's bill and Bush's mad rush towards the unrestrained executive privilege in a time of War (that has no defined enemy, no particular end in sight, no real definition of victory). The similarities between the approaches is in the fact that just as Roosevelt did not need the Court Packing Bill to pass to achieve his ultimate goal, Bush does not particularly need his signing statements, his blatant disregard for FISA, or his administration's embrace of institutionalized torture as a method of interrogation to be blessed by Congress. As a matter of fact, he has already (hollowly) backed away from his insistence that he can ignore the law of the land in FISA.
All he needs is for the Congress to continue to flinch in the face of his outlandish effrontery. It worked for 6 years, but the power of lame-duckery, and the humiliation of his war, and the inexorable increase of the public's personal distaste for the man will wear him down in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment