March 19, 2007

After Bush, Who Will Trust the Presidency?

 

Of course the president has the right to hire and fire U.S. Attorneys. Like many other federal officials, they serve “at the pleasure of the president”. Clinton fired all the federal prosecutors when he came into office. Who thinks this president shouldn’t have the same right as others past?

 

Presidents are granted many explicit powers, and historically a lot of slack, to respond to critical situations that may not be covered in the original scheme. The rub is that when we grant extraordinary powers to a leader, we assume he or she will exercise them in good faith. When this good faith is evident, the people and the Congress give the president the benefit of the doubt. When it isn’t, well, you get the current situation.

 

The actions of our current leaders inspire the gnawing feeling they would do anything deemed convenient for their own political or ideological purposes, leaving any attention to legal limitations or long-term consequences for the post-fallout justification.

 

It’s the “forgiveness over permission” approach, often necessary in large bureaucracies, but dangerous at the helm of the most powerful nation in the world. That’s the “cowboy” approach, even more descriptive when pronounced with a strong French accent.

 

Clearly the exigencies of a crisis may trump the niceties of normal legislative and judicial processes. A president may need to declassify information, grant a pardon or fire a general. It makes sense for a leader to go to a negotiation with the authority to use force if all else fails to pressure an adversary. Our comfort with this discretion requires leadership that puts the country above all. Perhaps for this reason our presidency is often compared to European royalty.

 

This arrangement implies an understanding that this authority will never be abused, but rather used in the interest of our country. Past presidents have, of course, stretched this guideline at times. Some more than others. But there has been a particular callousness over these last six years, as the president and his people have repeatedly used these special powers for their own purposes.

 

Some examples –

 

- Using the authority of the president to declassify intelligence selectively to make a political case for the Iraq war, then to justify previous inaccurate statements by high officials;

 

- Extending the powers of commander-in-chief to initiate a pre-determined and elective war, an abuse made even more poignant by using the state of war to justify the suspension of civil liberties and other governmental excesses;

 

- Using the “pleasure of the president statute”, generally applied at the beginning of presidential terms, to fire eight U.S. Attorneys, apparently to undermine corruption investigations of political friends; (then justifying this action by unnecessarily invoking “performance issues” - anyone feeling guilty?)

 

- Invoking executive privilege to allow the president’s “roving” political marketer-in-chief to avoid accountability for meddling in delicate legal matters, shielding the vice president’s shameful energy planning process from public view and other breeches of public trust;

 

- Suspending habeas corpus, accepted in rare situations, now institutionalized in Military Tribunals, keeping innocent people detained as guilty for years, based on evidence never reviewed by anyone other than the accusers;

 

- Coming attractions – Pardoning a political underling who took the rap for treasonous political vengeance by less expendable perpetrators. Just wait.

 

Many excesses have been justified by reference to our state of war, a common reason for special presidential powers over the years – the reason the Constitution creates a formal Senate process to declare this state, and quite missing here. The particular slimy slope of fighting wars that aren’t really wars is a legacy of the Vietnam era. Many more such legacies may emerge from these unfortunate years.

 

What looks like abuse of power to the rest of us may be fallout from believing the actions are doing the work of a higher power, rather than only keeping our country together and strong. The result is a weakening of trust in important institutions.  Once this trust is destroyed, it becomes very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle, to un-break the egg, etc. Trust is crucial to our system.

 

The president talks a lot about historical perspective. I’m afraid the worst of many bad historical legacies of this presidency may be the erosion of trust in some of our most important institutions, especially the presidency itself.

 

To offer feedback on this column, click here.