By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – August 16, 2007
When Karl Rove took over as George W. Bush’s political
brain, manager, and indeed independent executive in many matters political, he
established creating a “Permanent Republican Majority” as his primary
goal. This is one of the few of his goals that he actually announced
openly. Well, even with his constant use of personal prejudices and fears as
political weapons and with them the mobilization of the Christian right behind
his party, the creation of Fear of the Foreign (Mexican, Muslim, anything that
is not Us and also not white), the manipulation of the “terrorist threat,”
massive electoral cheating, and the labeling of all critics of the President’s
foreign policy as “traitors,” he has not been able to achieve that. The
principal reason is that the Permanent War that BushCheney have been so intent
on creating in Iraq is highly unpopular with the American people. This is
true even if most of them, as well as most political observers and
commentators, don’t realize that that is what the War on Iraq is all
about.
And so, without announcing it, it is becoming increasingly
clear that Rove, in concert with Cheney and Bush of course, has established a
new goal: the creation of the Permanent Republican Presidency. This is
something that they can achieve without ever getting a majority of the voters
to support Republicans overall. In fact, they are well on their way to
doing that, as I intend to show in a three-part series of which this is the
first. If the Democrats don’t wake up to this reality soon, it will be
all over come January 20, 2009. And when I say “the Democrats” here, I
don’t mean just either the Congressional Democrats or the Democratic candidates
for the Presidential nomination. I mean all of us.
As I will show in the next part next week, the Permanent
Republican Presidency is an achievable goal for them, whether the next Congress
is still Democratic or not. (In fact, for the existence of the Permanent
Republican Presidency, the way they construe the office, it would be
politically better for them if the Congress remains in Democratic hands.
But more on that next week too.) This is why the number one political
goal of both Democrats and the Democratic Party must be to win the presidential
election in 2008. Anything else will lead to disaster for the nation and
for the world, as well as for all of us who are dedicated to the Rule of Law and
Constitutional government.
We have to now recognize the weakness of our party in the
Federal government. It is a weakness that is created not by lousy
leadership. The leadership is not perfect, but they are not dumb and
Harry Reid for one has become relatively radicalized since the beginning of the
current Congress. But they are Constitutionally and practically weak as a
result of: how the Bush Administration treats the Congress (no “checks and
balances” for him; see Unchecked and Unbalanced by F.A.O. Schwarz Jr. [not
talking about toys] and Aziz Z. Huq) about which it can do little or nothing;
the “Joe Lieberman factor” in the Senate about which I have previously written;
and the combination of the “veto proof/filibuster-secure” voting base they have
in the Senate.
Our side must realize that we simply do not have the luxury
of railing away at the Democratic Congressional leadership for not doing what
they cannot do anyway, whether they want to or not. The only solution to
our nation’s Constitutional crisis and the specter of that Permanent Republican
Presidency is to take back the office in 2008. I will offer my ideas on
what the Democrats need to do to win in part three of this series. Since
I have dealt with the subject of “what should/must the Democrats do now?” so
many times in this space and others, for those of you who might be thinking “is
he going to offer anything new?” the answer is, in part, “yes.” For the
balance of this column, I will review the principal characteristics of what a
Permanent Republican Presidency would look like. Most of you know them,
but I am putting them here all in one place. Talk about promoting
fear!
Underlying the Permanent Republican Presidency is the Cheney
Theory of the “Unitary Executive,” a polite term for Presidential
Dictatorship. To a very significant extent, they have already achieved
the latter. They have done it in a way not previously seen in
history. Even in Nazi Germany, Hitler got a law through the Reichstag
(with certain voting members either excluded or totally intimidated to be sure)
that amended the Constitution to give him dictatorial powers. Most other
dictatorships have been established by the use of force, to a great or lesser
extent. But the CheneyBushRove Republicans have just changed the
Constitution on their own authority, without either going through the amendment
process or using force (so far). They did have the benefit of a lock-step
Republican majority in the Congress for most of the first six years of their
reign, but many of their changes have been made without legislative action,
much less Constitutional amendment. These people just believe, as Bush
has been famously quoted as saying, that the Constitution is just a scrap of
paper.
And so we have, in terms of actions that clearly violate
either the Constitution or specific Federal statute (not necessarily in order
of importance), for example:
1. A highly secretive Administration,
according to the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office (just
illegally ignored by Cheney since 2002) which uses “classified” to conceal all
sorts of actions from both the public and the Congress. (See “Government
Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007” by OpentheGovernment.org and People
for the American Way.)
2. The well-known use of Presidential
Signing Statements to let everyone know that the President will be violating
Federal statute. (In this case they are at least open about it.)
Bush claims that he is doing this when he finds a bill passed by Congress “to
be in violation of the Constitution.” Under the latter, Bush has only one
means for doing this: the veto. He has made up another one out of whole
cloth. As a result, Bush has on his authority has simply nullified
Congressionally passed legislation (B. Beutler, www.alterent.org/story/54543/,
June 18, 2007).
3. The open violation of Article VI of the
Constitution concerning signed treaties and the place they have as the “Supreme
Law of the land,” when he authorizes the violation of the Geneva Conventions in
the matter of torture.
4. The liberal (sic) use of Executive
Orders to expand executive power in areas of the law that would ordinarily
require the passage of legislation. The most recent (and one of the most
outrageous) examples of this the Executive Order of July 17, 2007, “Blocking
Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.”
In National Security Presidential Directive 51 of May 15, 2007, Bush arrogated
to himself the power to declare a “Catastrophic Emergency” under which declaration
he could than take over the functions of the whole of the Federal government,
including the courts and the Congress.
5. Bush has adopted a very broad definition
of “Executive Privilege,” much broader than that adopted by any previous
President, even Nixon (see, for example, D. Eggen and A. Goldstein, “Broader
Privilege Claimed in Firings,” Washington Post, July 20, 2007). This is a
major element of the “F___ You” Presidency that I have discussed
previously. (In his famous response to a private question from Sen.
Patrick Leahy on the floor of the US Senate, using the same language, Cheney
first established this as a governing principle for the Administration.)
A prime example this approach to the office was the recent exchange before the
Senate Judiciary Committee in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of
Sen. Schumer's questions --- he didn't say he didn't remember, he didn't invoke
a privilege. He just said, “F___ You. No. I’m not going to discuss that
with you. Move on to the next question.” And Schumer had no choice but to
do so. In other words, “regardless of the Constitutional principle of checks
and balances and balance of powers, we are not going to tell you anything we
don’t want to --- and that covers most of our actions.”
6. In gradually saturating the Federal
Courts with like-minded Right-wing Republicans, through the means of the
six-year Republican control of that body (and now with the help of certain
Democratic Senators like Diane Feinstein), BushCheney are well on their way to
co-opting the whole of the Federal court system. The results of that were
made clear by the spate of pro-corporate, anti-civil liberties,
pro-institutional racism decisions handed down by the Supreme Court and several
other high Federal courts this past spring.
7. Finally, and this is key to
establishing the Permanent Republican Presidency and thus the Unitary
Executive, as has become abundantly clear in the last three months, BushCheney
have totally politicized the Department of Justice.
As I said, most of us know all of this stuff, but when you
put it one place it becomes particularly frightening, doesn’t it? Next
week I shall discuss the Republican plans for winning the Presidency in
2008. The plan does not necessarily include manufacturing a “terrorist
attack” in October of that year, although they might have to go that way.
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This Column is based in part on my Commentaries “Deranged,
Delusional, NOT” of 07/24/2007 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/070)
and “Will the Real George Bush Be Made to Stand Up?” of 07/31/2007 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/071).