Has executive activism turned the President into a wimp?

Friday, Dec. 23, 2005

Sinking Ship: Hell hath no fury like a branch of government scorned. The Republican Congress didn't mind rolling over for a popular president, but now that the Bush White House is a heavy burden, Hill Republicans are eager to put him in a lockbox.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham tells the Washington Post, "What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get off the sidelines and jump in with both feet." Some Hill Republicans are calling for a congressional investigation into Bush's domestic spy scandal, while Hill Democrats float words they used to hate, like "special prosecutor" and "impeachment."

The irony of this congressional resurgence is that Bush could have had all the rubber stamps he wanted if he'd been more careful to stay between the lines. The spy court Bush skirted has been a bigger rubber stamp than Tom DeLay, approving all 1758 requests for secret surveillance last year.

For all the high-minded huffing and puffing about checks and balances, the most interesting question in any presidential scandal is much simpler: Why did he do it? This scandal is a paranoiac's delight, confirming the worst fears of libertarians, communitarians, and vegetarians that the federal government is out to get them. Some conspiracy theorists will no doubt conclude that the Bush administration deliberately overreached in a clever attempt to turn the citizenry against their government.

The black-helicopter crowd can relax. If the Bush White House really cared about spying on Americans, they wouldn't leave it to a few data miners at NSA and gumshoes at the FBI. This scandal has little to do with wars, spies, or laws, and everything to do with presidential power.

From the beginning, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made a fetish of asserting the power of the executive. They didn't need to. As conservative Bruce Fein told the Washington Post, "Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he's still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974." In different ways, Reagan and Clinton had restored the presidency from its weakened state. Both men showed that a president able to take his case to the country could stare down Congress every time.

Nonetheless, Bush and Cheney had their own reasons for presidential power building. Both men were CEOs who equated impatience with efficiency, and envisioned a don't-bore-me-with-the-facts, CEO-style presidency. In the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, Cheney had run the White House at its weakest point, as chief of staff to the first unelected president. Bush had suffered his own indignities as governor in a state where the lieutenant governor has all the power.

After the 2000 election, Bush and Cheney didn't want theirs to look like another unelected presidency. So they set out to do Lord Acton one better: Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but you can't blame a guy for trying.

Acting Out: Since the spy scandal broke, the President has been searching for any excuse – whining about leaks, blaming his predecessors, trotting out Justice Department lawyers. Bush should step forward and call his end run what it is: executive activism.