The upcoming US presidential election
Posted by: ErikL on 04 February 2004
Welcome are voices from all corners of the globe and all political beliefs.
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by Justin
Bush has a 43% approval rating at the moment. The polls taken just before the republican convention had Bush getting only 45% of the popular vote and Kerry getting 47% (Nader at 3%). As was true in 2000, Bush will probably lose the popular vote.
However, he is predicted to win the electoral vote (and in any event is slated right now to win even the popular vote among those who are "likely" to vote. I have NO FREAKING CLUE why Kerry get the majority of those registered to vote and Bush gets the majority of those "likely to vote". This proves that the Republicans are better able to mobilize their base.
It is not suprising, perhaps, that Mick met only people who support Bush. The lines dividing red versus green voting are sharly focussed. If Mick resolutely kept himself outside of the city centers in most states of the US (but not all) he would likely have met many more Bush supporters than Kerry supporters.
Judd
However, he is predicted to win the electoral vote (and in any event is slated right now to win even the popular vote among those who are "likely" to vote. I have NO FREAKING CLUE why Kerry get the majority of those registered to vote and Bush gets the majority of those "likely to vote". This proves that the Republicans are better able to mobilize their base.
It is not suprising, perhaps, that Mick met only people who support Bush. The lines dividing red versus green voting are sharly focussed. If Mick resolutely kept himself outside of the city centers in most states of the US (but not all) he would likely have met many more Bush supporters than Kerry supporters.
Judd
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by JonR
There was talk on the news here that Kerry waited too long to 'come out fighting', ie. it wasn't until Bush/Cheney et al attacked his Vietnam record at the Republican convention that he retaliated in kind. I think the speculation was that some Democrats were looking elsewhere for new campaign strategists or something cos they reckon the current campaign is now scuppered and it's too late to pull it back.
A few days before there was what I thought a quite candid interview on breakfast TV here with a guy called Rich Galen, who's apparently some Republic back-room strategist. He said that conventions, whether Republican or Democrat, are 'emotional' events as opposed to 'logical' ones, ie. they are NOT an opportunity for seasoned political discourse on the issues of the day. Instead its just an opportunity to adopt then eulogise the presidential candidate of choice such that it plays to maximum effect with the public.
Ultimately what it comes down to, he suggested, is that Americans have little time for complex arguments over why one party might be better in government than the other. He said that were a journalist to ask an American voter why they supported a presidential candidate, the voter would reply that they 'liked their stand on the issues'. However if the journalist were to attempt to dig deeper and ask what stand on what political issue, the voter would just dismiss the question and just say they liked their stand.
What we do know is that Bush is a fighter and he wants another four years really really badly. We know he will do anything to get them. With seasoned mud-slingers like Karl Rove working away behind the scenes he has the ability to fight as dirty as he needs to. Couple that with the fact that Americans just seems to like him more than Kerry and it's hard to argue, IMHO, with the likely outcome of the November vote, however unpalatable it will be to most of us here.
Regards,
JonR
A few days before there was what I thought a quite candid interview on breakfast TV here with a guy called Rich Galen, who's apparently some Republic back-room strategist. He said that conventions, whether Republican or Democrat, are 'emotional' events as opposed to 'logical' ones, ie. they are NOT an opportunity for seasoned political discourse on the issues of the day. Instead its just an opportunity to adopt then eulogise the presidential candidate of choice such that it plays to maximum effect with the public.
Ultimately what it comes down to, he suggested, is that Americans have little time for complex arguments over why one party might be better in government than the other. He said that were a journalist to ask an American voter why they supported a presidential candidate, the voter would reply that they 'liked their stand on the issues'. However if the journalist were to attempt to dig deeper and ask what stand on what political issue, the voter would just dismiss the question and just say they liked their stand.
What we do know is that Bush is a fighter and he wants another four years really really badly. We know he will do anything to get them. With seasoned mud-slingers like Karl Rove working away behind the scenes he has the ability to fight as dirty as he needs to. Couple that with the fact that Americans just seems to like him more than Kerry and it's hard to argue, IMHO, with the likely outcome of the November vote, however unpalatable it will be to most of us here.
Regards,
JonR
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by JonR
quote:
Originally posted by Justin:
PS. You've heard that somebody inside 10 Downing is quietly saying that TB is pulling for Kerry. This can only be good news for him. I think Americans really like TB.
Judd,
Just noticed your PS. above. AFAIK it's not TB that has 'voiced' his support but another government minister called Peter Hain, who has always been traditionally more to the left of Blair and has been known to be in favour of restoring Labour's 'traditional' links with the Democrats.
Teflon Bliar is too wiley a politician to openly align himself with someone who does not at this stage look as if he will win. For him it'll be his best mate George W until the fat lady sings...so to speak.
Regards,
JonR
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by ErikL
To some degree backing JonR's comment about Americans (very clearly not those here) who can't speak in depth about politics and even worse have conflicted views, is this:
Dumb Delegates
The first bit is on Michael Moore attending the RNC, but after that a few Republican delegates are interviewed. I get the feeling a few of you will enjoy it.
Dumb Delegates
The first bit is on Michael Moore attending the RNC, but after that a few Republican delegates are interviewed. I get the feeling a few of you will enjoy it.
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by ErikL
The Economist on Bush:
THE CONTRADICTORY CONSERVATIVE
Aug 26th 2004
Despite the narrowness of his mandate, George Bush has done more to
alter America's profile abroad, and its government at home, than any
president in years
NEXT weekend, the Republicans, meeting in New York, will anoint George
Bush as their candidate for a second term. His approval ratings in his
own party stand at around 86%. Among Democrats, they run at around 8%.
Few presidents have been loved and loathed as heartily as Mr Bush; few
have so starkly polarised the country; and few have done so much to
change both the way America's government behaves at home, and the way
it is perceived abroad.
The Bush presidency has proved a radical unsettling force, from AIDS
policy in Africa to education reform at home; in different ways, for
good and ill, it has undermined the rulers of both Saudi Arabia and San
Francisco. Rather than offering a compendium of all that Mr Bush has
achieved, this special report will focus on three projects that history
may eventually judge the most controversial: the alleged "revolution"
in foreign policy, the pursuit of big-government conservatism and the
dramatic expansion of presidential powers. These may not prove the
deciding factors in the coming election; but they may be the ones that
resonate longest.
Begin with foreign policy. Mr Bush has had a bigger impact on diplomacy
than any president since Harry Truman. After the second world war,
Truman set up the system of alliances that ensured the Soviet threat
would be contained and American leadership of the West would continue
after Europe recovered. Ronald Reagan turned Truman's creation into
more of a public challenge to what the Soviet Union stood for, but he
did not fundamentally alter its structure.
Mr Bush did. After the end of the cold war--long after, in fact--he
argued that the old world order had run its course. He rejected both a
supposed cornerstone--the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty--and some
later additions, such as the Kyoto accords and the International
Criminal Court, both also rejected by Congress.
But Mr Bush's foreign-policy revolution actually came in two steps.
The rejection of the treaties was the first and, since it came to terms
with a geopolitical fact, the Soviet collapse, it may well prove the
more lasting. The second step came only after the September 11th
attacks, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response to the
atrocity, NATO for the first time invoked its article 5 provision that
an attack on one member is an attack on all, signalling a willingness
to help America militarily. The Bush administration was slow to pick up
the offer. "Coalitions of the willing" took the place of traditional
alliances. Then, in Iraq, Mr Bush put his doctrine of prevention and
possible pre-emption into effect. In an age of global terror, this
said, self-defence meant acting alone and pre-emptively, if need be.
Working through the United Nations--ie, waiting for others--could be
suicide.
These two steps obviously had much in common. Both said that treaties
can constrain America's freedom of action and that, when they do, they
should be ignored. Both imply that the exercise of power alone may be
enough to achieve American aims. Still, the second step went beyond the
first. It proposed new rules for going to war and a substitute for
traditional alliances--the willing coalitions.
Over the past few weeks, however, these additions have begun to look
shaky. Is the Bush revolution in foreign affairs reaching its limits?
It may be. In May 2003, on the flight-deck of the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
Mr Bush argued that once upon a time, "military power was used to end a
regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a
nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime." Experience in
Iraq contradicts that optimism, or at least suggests that "freeing a
nation" requires more than just bringing down a troublesome regime.
Legitimacy, it turns out, matters. It does not spring up spontaneously
if American motives are pure, as some in the administration have
argued. And coalitions of the willing do little to confer legitimacy.
Moreover, as Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and Jim Lindsay
of the Council on Foreign Relations have argued, the doctrine of
pre-emption supposes that the intelligence services will be good enough
to warn America of threats before they are realised. The catalogue of
errors is not reassuring on this point.
Lastly, problems in Iraq have strained the unstable coalition that is
Mr Bush's foreign-policy team. Neo-conservatives, who argue that
America's destiny is to spread democracy round the world, are losing
influence. The world-view of assertive nationalists (notably Dick
Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of
defence), who say military might will be enough to deter America's
enemies, has not been dethroned. But it has been weakened, and their
unilateralist instincts look more problematic. The "soft power"
diplomats--Colin Powell and the State Department--have become more
important. All this raises questions about support for Mr Bush's
foreign policy even within his own cabinet.
As if to confirm the doubts, the past few months have seen a new look.
Having handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis and got the Security
Council's blessing, as it always meant to, America has also asked
Europeans to endorse its "Broader Middle East Initiative" and appealed
to NATO to help train Iraqi troops. The big question now is whether
these changes are part of a profound reappraisal of American foreign
policy, or whether they are just tactical adjustments to recent
difficulties.
The honest answer is that it is too early to be sure. But the changes
are probably tactical. Despite the presence of heavyweights in his
cabinet, Mr Bush has always been the author of America's foreign-policy
transformation, and he has repeatedly denied any new change of course.
This is not to be discounted; in foreign affairs, the president has
usually signalled what he is planning to do very clearly.
It is true that Iraq has raised doubts about the doctrine of
prevention and pre-emption. But the debate has shown that the
alternative "rules for going to war" are, from America's viewpoint, far
worse. This is the claim, particularly espoused by France and Germany,
that, except in the case of actual attack or imminent threat, countries
cannot use military force legitimately without the approval of the
Security Council. No American president would ever accept, or has ever
accepted, such an idea. If others insist that the alternative to
unilateralism is the UN, America will stick with unilateralism.
Most important, the underlying rationale of Mr Bush's transformed
policy has not really changed. This is that there is a huge gap in
military power between America and everyone else, that the country has
opportunities denied to anyone else and that traditional alliances are
therefore useful rather than necessary. Iraq has shown that the
exercise of American power is harder than the administration thought;
but the exercise of power is still what matters most to Mr Bush. In
that sense, his foreign policy is being refined, not retooled.
Mr Bush once campaigned as a proponent of a "humble" foreign policy.
In practice, he has not provided one. On the domestic front, he has
been equally surprising. And despite the narrowness of his mandate, he
has proved as polarising at home as he is abroad. Consider, next, the
peculiar character of the president's domestic conservatism.
A BIG-GOVERNMENT GUY
This is one of the most conservative politicians ever to inhabit the
White House. Mr Bush has fed red meat to the various groups that make
up the conservative coalition--opposition to abortion, gay marriage and
stem-cell research for social conservatives; the invasion of Iraq for
neo-conservatives; tax-breaks and deregulation for business
conservatives. He has driven liberals stark raving bonkers. "Among the
worst presidents in US history," proclaimed Jonathan Chait in the NEW
REPUBLIC. "Incomparably more dangerous than Reagan or any other
president in this nation's history," wrote Harold Meyerson in the
AMERICAN PROSPECT.
But exactly what sort of conservative is Mr Bush? Ever since Barry
Goldwater's quixotic bid for the White House in 1964, American
conservatism has been a small-government philosophy. Ronald Reagan
regarded government as the problem rather than the solution, and
therefore shrank social programmes. Newt Gingrich's troops assaulted
not just Lyndon Johnson's Great Society but also a pillar of FDR's New
Deal, the welfare system.
Mr Bush's track-record has been very different. While cutting taxes in
a dramatic way that Mr Reagan would surely have applauded, he has
relentlessly expanded both the scale and scope of central
government--in order to advance the conservative cause. Mr Bush has
tried to preside over the birth of a new political philosophy:
big-government conservatism.
The Bush presidency has seen the biggest increase in discretionary
spending since his fellow Texan, Johnson, was in the White House (see
chart 1). In his first term, according to the 2005 budget, total
federal spending will rise by 29%, more than triple the rate of
increase in Bill Clinton's second term. The Bush administration raised
spending on education from $36 billion in 2001 to $63 billion in 2004,
a 75% increase; it has also pushed through the biggest expansion of
Medicare, the federal health-care plan for the old, since the programme
was created in the 1960s. More people now work for the federal
government than at any time in history.
It could be argued that the expansion of government under Mr Bush is
the unfortunate consequence of events, particularly the September 11th
attacks. The terrorist threat more or less forced the government to
create a giant new homeland-security apparatus, which Mr Bush at first
opposed. Mr Bush has promised conservatives that he will try to get
spending under control; the 2005 budget envisions domestic
discretionary spending rising by only 0.5% and calls for the abolition
of 65 federal programmes, saving $4.9 billion.
NOT JUST HOMELAND SECURITY
Yet this argument seems unconvincing. The war on terror accounts for
only part of the increase in government spending. As for Mr Bush's
promise that he will eventually get spending under control, the White
House has already embraced commitments that could keep government
growing for years. On some estimates, the Medicare bill alone could end
up costing $2 trillion in its second decade.
Mr Bush's big-government conservatism goes beyond a mere blind response
to events. During the 2000 campaign, he made it clear that he had a
different attitude to government from his fellow conservatives. He sang
the praises of "focused, effective and energetic government". Rather
than calling for the abolition of the Department of Education, like the
rest of his fellow conservatives, he called for its expansion. He even
had a good word to say about Johnson's Great Society.
Mr Bush's big-government conservatism also goes beyond a mere
willingness to spend public money. He has reversed a long-standing
Republican commitment to decentralisation by giving the federal
government a greater role in setting education standards than it has
ever had before. He has also reversed a long-standing Republican
suspicion of government bossiness by trying to use government to
promote conservative values. The Education Department is promoting
abstinence in sex education. The Department of Health and Human
Services is trying to use the welfare system to advocate the virtues of
marriage and responsible fatherhood. John Ashcroft's Justice Department
has ridden over states' rights to prosecute people who believe in
assisted suicide and the medical use of marijuana.
Where has all this come from? Mr Bush turned to big-government
conservatism as an antidote to growing problems of the small-government
kind. As the 1990s wore on, Mr Gingrich and his merry band increasingly
tried America's patience with their bomb-throwing radicalism. The
middle classes had been happy to advocate tough love for the poor, but
they were much less happy when the tough love involved cuts to Medicare
or student loans. Not unfairly, Mr Bush calculated that making peace
with government was the only way to re-endear conservatism to the
middle class.
Many of his fervent supporters regarded tax cuts as their highest
priority: cuts that Mr Bush duly delivered. But many elements in the
conservative coalition also looked to government to solve their
problems. Business people wanted the government to subsidise their
industries at home and promote their interests abroad. Corporate
America had been calling for educational reform for years. Social
conservatives were keen on using government to promote "virtue" or
eradicate "vice" (from assisted suicide to pot-smoking), a position
highly attractive to a president who starts every cabinet meeting with
a prayer. The White House and the Republican majority in Congress
worked assiduously to shower government largesse on Republican-leaning
interest groups. Agricultural legislation involved a huge give-away to
agribusiness; prescription-drugs legislation provided a bonanza for the
pharmaceutical industry.
The neo-conservative intelligentsia has played as vital a role in
promoting big-government conservatism as it did in promoting the Iraq
war. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, sees the growth
of the state as "natural, indeed inevitable". His son Bill uses his
WEEKLY STANDARD magazine to lead a crusade to replace "leave-us-alone
conservatism" with "national-greatness conservatism". Mr Kristol and
his supporters argue that "wishing to be left alone isn't a governing
doctrine", and that loving your country while hating its government is
not a sustainable philosophical position. Besides, there is no need to
hate government if it is in the right (Republican) hands.
A LASTING PHILOSOPHY?
The most compelling argument in favour of Mr Bush's policies is that he
is doing more than just expanding government. He is increasingly tying
public spending to competition and accountability. The No Child Left
Behind Act, the most interesting reform of American education for a
generation, uses a combination of national standards and standardised
testing to measure children's progress: if too many children in a
particular school fail to hit the required standards, then parents have
the right to move them elsewhere. The Medicare reforms have been a way
of introducing medical savings accounts. The proposed individual
investment accounts in Social Security (federal pensions) will give
individuals more responsibility for managing their nest eggs. This
emphasis on accountability explains why public-sector unions loathe Mr
Bush, despite his big-spending ways.
Yet attempts to introduce competition in schools or health care have
not gone very far. There are good reasons to doubt whether the
educational bureaucracy will ever have the guts to close down failing
schools. The Bush administration signally failed to use the expansion
of Medicare as a lever for introducing structural reforms, such as
means-testing. Mr Bush's only real chance to build choice into the
heart of a government programme lies in his mooted Social Security
reforms.
Even if these programmes can be made to work, big-government
conservatism undoubtedly has drawbacks. The new creed's biggest problem
is simple: if you cut taxes deeply while increasing spending lavishly,
you end up with a gigantic deficit. This newspaper is not about to
argue that cutting taxes is wrong in principle: the Republican Party's
instinct that it is better to leave money in voters' pockets than to
give it to bureaucrats has been one of its most attractive features.
But big, persistent budget deficits also put a burden on people. If the
Republicans continue to tax like a small-government party and spend
like a big-government one, deficits could average $500 billion a year
for the next decade--an alarming prospect. Mr Bush should be preparing
for the retirement of the huge baby-boomer generation.
Nor is big-government conservatism the political cure-all that it might
seem. It is alienating big chunks of the Republican coalition.
Libertarians don't want to be told whether they can smoke pot by Mr
Ashcroft. Old-fashioned conservatives don't want to see Washington
extending its power over local schools. And good-government types don't
want to see the deficit balloon out of control.
Senator John McCain has reprimanded Mr Bush for failing to use his veto
to control a Congress which is spending money "like a drunken sailor".
Rush Limbaugh has complained that Mr Bush's legacy may be the greatest
increase in domestic spending, and one of the greatest setbacks to
liberty, in modern times. "This may be compassionate", says Mr
Limbaugh, "but it is not conservatism at all."
A third problem lies with unintended consequences. Forty years ago,
the founding fathers of neo-conservatism criticised the Great Society
on the grounds that its soaring intentions often produced bad results:
rent control reduces the availability of affordable housing, for
example. The biggest unintended consequence of Mr Bush's efforts may be
that big-government conservatism morphs into big-government liberalism.
Government is by its nature a knife that cuts to the left, in part
because government employees tend to be on the left, in part because
government programmes promote dependency. Rather than twisting
government to conservative ends, the Republicans may simply be creating
yet more ammunition for future Democratic administrations.
Mr Bush is nothing if not ambitious. If his new philosophy endures, he
will be a transformative figure in the history of the modern
conservative movement. If it fails, he will be seen as a domestic
policymaker who doomed himself by ignoring the central insight of the
revolution that began with Goldwater: that the essence of conservatism
lies in shrinking government.
Mr Bush's presidency has been radical not only in what he has tried to
do, but in the way he has gone about doing it. His term has seen an
extraordinary change in style. Partly by his own efforts, partly as a
result of underlying forces, he has increased the power of the
presidency at the expense of other branches of government. This is the
third great project of his presidency, the least noticed outside
Washington, DC, and perhaps the most worrying.
IMPERIUM REVISITED
Mr Bush came to office arguing that restrictions on presidential
authority, especially since Watergate, had harmed decision-making. The
implication is that good government requires a certain period of
privacy in which officials can thrash out policies. The public should
judge only the result. In 2002, his vice-president, Dick Cheney, said,
"I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the
president of the United States to do his job." He said he and Mr Bush
had talked about the need to "pass on our offices in better shape than
we found them to our successors." They have succeeded, after a fashion,
but at a heavy cost.
Unified government, with the administration and Congress under the
same party's control, tends to boost presidential authority anyway--the
more so this time, as the Republican Party is fairly disciplined. Tom
DeLay, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, has defined
his job simply: "How do I advance the president's agenda?" The party's
narrow majority keeps troops in line. Lest there be any backsliding, Mr
Bush's personal campaigning in the 2002 mid-term elections reminded
congressmen and senators of their interest in keeping on good terms
with him.
More important, wars always increase the powers of the executive
branch. Because it has implications for America's domestic freedoms,
the war on terror may well end up increasing executive power more than
most.
But Mr Bush's ambitions have gone beyond what these underlying forces
make inevitable. One measure of his ambition was the claim of the
Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department (the administration's
main source of legal advice), made in August 2002, that the president's
authority as commander-in-chief was in effect unlimited in the conduct
of a war. As the legal opinion put it, he "enjoys complete discretion
in the exercise of his commander-in-chief authority."
This claim showed how expansive Mr Bush's view of his powers could be.
No former president had gone that far. In fact, it was too far. The
Supreme Court said the constitution did not warrant such a reading and
struck down the policy based on it: holding detainees from the war in
Afghanistan without charge. But the case was unusual only in that the
high court overruled Mr Bush. More commonly, he has had his way.
The most important check on a president's authority is Congress,
formally the sovereign power. To see how Mr Bush and his allies have
treated the legislature, consider the Medicare bill.
In January 2003, the White House sent Congress a proposal for reform
of the health-care system. The price tag, it said, was $400 billion.
The real cost was $534 billion. Medicare's chief actuary was told not
to answer congressional questions on pain of dismissal. After the House
and Senate passed different versions of the proposal, the Republicans
began work to reconcile the two. They refused to let five of the
Democrats nominated to the process take part in deliberations--and
rewrote the bill.
Even then, they fell short of a majority when voting began, at 3am.
Defying precedent, the House leadership held the vote open for three
hours while arms were twisted. The bill finally passed just before 6am.
Norm Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute,
called it the ugliest breach of congressional standards in modern
history.
Making laws has always been like making sausages (don't look closely).
When the Democrats were in charge, they did not always run Congress as
prescribed in the civics textbooks. Some of Congress's hallowed
traditions could do with pruning, especially the power of committees.
But the Republicans have put forward none of this in mitigation.
Instead, they have claimed, in essence, that the ends justify the
means. Mr Bush, they say, has pushed big tax cuts and education and
health-care reforms through a closely divided, bitterly partisan
institution. The alternative to such strong-arm tactics was legislative
gridlock, which, they argue, would have been worse.
Even if you think the ends are good, the means have inflicted
institutional harm on Congress. The committee system for amending bills
has all but collapsed. Bills are now written by the leaders and their
staffs, in concert with the White House. Debate is often cut off: many
controversial measures are voted on under a "closed rule", which bars
amendments. The conference stage, when different versions of a bill are
reconciled, has been turned from an occasion for compromise into yet
another opportunity for partisan gain. Sometimes the conference
committee does not meet at all. Sometimes Republicans have ignored the
rule that says the committee can only iron out differences, and have
fundamentally altered bills at the last minute. The budget process is
in tatters.
DOZING WATCHDOGS
As for Congress's other main job--oversight of the
administration--that has declined too, with a few exceptions (the
Senate Armed Services Committee held useful hearings on the Abu Ghraib
scandal). Serious investigation has been left to special commissions,
such as the one that looked into the September 11th attacks. The
responsibility for this lies largely with congressional Republicans:
they are reluctant to investigate one of their own. But Mr Bush has not
exactly shown deference to Congress's oversight role. The White House
refused to let Tom Ridge, the head of homeland security, testify in
2002. It declared it would not answer questions from Democrats on
budget committees. Mr Bush refused to testify before the 9/11
commission. In all these cases, the administration finally backed down.
But at a time of dramatic change, the watchdogs of Congress have been
dozing.
Congressional oversight is at the heart of the administration's claim
that excessive intrusiveness is harming executive decision-making. The
CAUSE CeLeBRE in this case was the new energy policy. When Democrats
attempted to force the vice-president to reveal whom he had met while
formulating an energy bill, Mr Cheney refused, arguing that the
constitution protects the president and vice-president from
congressional attempts to reveal details of their deliberations. As the
solicitor-general argued to the Supreme Court, "Congress may neither
intrude on the president's ability to perform these [deliberative]
functions, nor authorise private litigants to use the court to do so."
On this occasion, Mr Cheney prevailed. His victory will encourage
future administrations.
But the administration has not stopped there. The power of the
president is limited not only by the might of Congress but by a host of
smaller laws and administrative rules: freedom-of-information requests,
the power to classify documents, and civil-service procedures. Partly
in response to domestic security worries, the discretionary power of
the executive has increased substantially in these areas.
The best-known examples come from the Patriot Act, which boosted
law-enforcement powers and surveillance. That act, at least, was passed
by Congress and is subject to congressional review. More commonly, the
administration has increased its powers by asserting them. Soon after
September 11th, Mr Ashcroft issued new guidelines on
freedom-of-information requests. The attorney-general reversed the
Clinton-era policy of rejecting such requests only if to allow them
would cause "substantial harm". Public-interest groups complain that
requests are now often denied, even over matters that seem to have
nothing to do with security, such as pollution or car safety.
According to figures from the National Archives, around 44m documents
were classified in the first two years of the current
administration--as many as in the whole of Mr Clinton's second term.
More officials--including, for some reason, the secretary of
agriculture--have been given the power to classify materials. This is
more than just a response to September 11th. Mr Bush has issued an
executive order overturning the rule that presidential papers are
automatically declassified 12 years after presidents leave office;
instead, he said, former presidents could decide whether to disclose
their papers during their lifetimes, and the incumbent president would
also have power of review.
IN THE DETAILS
A subset of this reaction against scrutiny is the use of what might be
called government by small print: slipping additions into law at the
last minute or tinkering with the wording of rules that implement laws.
As a recent series in the WASHINGTON POST argued, such changes often
appear minor but can have a big impact. By changing the word "waste" to
"fill" in a rule governing coal-mining, for instance, the
administration allowed an increase in strip-mining in West Virginia. By
adding two sentences about scientific evidence to an unrelated budget
bill, it gave itself increased authority to rule in regulatory disputes.
Perhaps the most disturbing way in which the administration has
increased its power has been through its public-relations machine.
Thomas Jefferson said long ago that a well-informed electorate is the
most important constraint on government. By issuing partial and
sometimes misleading information, the Bush administration has hampered
such scrutiny.
Consider for instance the arguments for tax cuts. Here, Mr Bush made
claims about the cost of the cuts and their distributional impact that
he should have known were misleading. In 2000, he claimed the first
round of cuts would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, a quarter of the
budget surplus at that point. On his own figures, the share was a
third, not a quarter, and he arrived at the figure only through
outrageous accounting gimmicks that he is now campaigning to forbid.
He also asserted that the cuts would provide "the greatest help for
those most in need", providing a Treasury study to back up his claim.
In the past, Treasury studies have been impartial. But this one arrived
at its conclusion by leaving out the parts of the tax cut that most
benefited the wealthiest (such as the repeal of the estate tax). By any
normal measure, the tax cuts have been regressive--hardly "the greatest
help for those most in need".
Taking facts out of context, politicising government studies and
presenting anomalous examples as typical are hardly unique to the Bush
administration. But they still do damage. The system of checks and
balances--indeed, democracy itself--requires voters to be able to
understand the impact of actions taken on their behalf, so they can
apportion credit or blame fairly. If it is impossible to tell how much
of the administration's arguments for war were vindicated or disproved,
or who the tax cuts really helped, then proper public accounting is
impossible.
Beyond that, members of the administration have occasionally acted in
ways that have discouraged public debate directly. In May 2002, the
White House's communications director, Dan Bartlett, argued in the
WASHINGTON POST that Democratic criticisms of administration actions
before September 11th were "exactly what our opponents, our enemies,
want us to do." Mr Ashcroft had earlier conflated civil-liberties
activists with terrorist sympathisers, telling Congress: "To those who
scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is
this: your tactics only aid terrorists." All this came near to arguing
that, after September 11th, debate itself could be treasonous.
Mr Bush has frequently said that voters will give their verdict in
November, and that he looks forward to it. But quadrennial elections
are not the only means of restraining government. The genius of the
American system is that administrations must work within a system of
checks and balances. These checks have themselves been checked.
Congress is the main competing source of power. It has become more
like an adjunct to the administration. Information encourages public
scrutiny. The flow has been reduced. The administration's actions are
filtered through civil-service rules and procedures. The rules have
been chopped and changed. A free press is essential to the working of
democracy. Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, rejected that
view, arguing "I don't believe you [the press] have a check-and-balance
function." On occasion, the administration has even crossed the line
separating the interests of the state from the party by using
taxpayers' money to finance advertising for the Medicare bill.
Almost all governments bend the truth. This one has seldom resorted to
outright falsehood; instead, the administration has manipulated public
information and breached basic standards of political conduct in
Congress, the civil service and public debate. Whatever the merits of
increasing presidential authority, Mr Bush has achieved his aim less by
winning support for more power than by weakening the authority of other
institutions.
IN THE ROUND
Mr Bush's supporters may regard carping on about this expansion of
powers as a distraction from other more visible achievements of his
presidency. Look, they may argue, at the way that the White House has
set about reducing nuclear proliferation, or at his plans to build an
ownership society at home, or at the long-term economic stimulus of his
tax reform. From the other side, his critics complain that the
administration has trashed the environment, or worsened inequality, or
schemed to roll back abortion rights.
It usually takes some time for the true significance of any presidency
to emerge. Mr Bush's most contentious projects may come to seem
relatively unimportant. For now, perhaps the most remarkable thing
about this presidency is the extent to which it has already confounded
expectations. When Mr Bush was elected, it was widely believed that his
power would be slight and he would achieve little. For better or worse,
those predictions were refuted. Whether this will help or harm him in
November remains to be seen.
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THE CONTRADICTORY CONSERVATIVE
Aug 26th 2004
Despite the narrowness of his mandate, George Bush has done more to
alter America's profile abroad, and its government at home, than any
president in years
NEXT weekend, the Republicans, meeting in New York, will anoint George
Bush as their candidate for a second term. His approval ratings in his
own party stand at around 86%. Among Democrats, they run at around 8%.
Few presidents have been loved and loathed as heartily as Mr Bush; few
have so starkly polarised the country; and few have done so much to
change both the way America's government behaves at home, and the way
it is perceived abroad.
The Bush presidency has proved a radical unsettling force, from AIDS
policy in Africa to education reform at home; in different ways, for
good and ill, it has undermined the rulers of both Saudi Arabia and San
Francisco. Rather than offering a compendium of all that Mr Bush has
achieved, this special report will focus on three projects that history
may eventually judge the most controversial: the alleged "revolution"
in foreign policy, the pursuit of big-government conservatism and the
dramatic expansion of presidential powers. These may not prove the
deciding factors in the coming election; but they may be the ones that
resonate longest.
Begin with foreign policy. Mr Bush has had a bigger impact on diplomacy
than any president since Harry Truman. After the second world war,
Truman set up the system of alliances that ensured the Soviet threat
would be contained and American leadership of the West would continue
after Europe recovered. Ronald Reagan turned Truman's creation into
more of a public challenge to what the Soviet Union stood for, but he
did not fundamentally alter its structure.
Mr Bush did. After the end of the cold war--long after, in fact--he
argued that the old world order had run its course. He rejected both a
supposed cornerstone--the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty--and some
later additions, such as the Kyoto accords and the International
Criminal Court, both also rejected by Congress.
But Mr Bush's foreign-policy revolution actually came in two steps.
The rejection of the treaties was the first and, since it came to terms
with a geopolitical fact, the Soviet collapse, it may well prove the
more lasting. The second step came only after the September 11th
attacks, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response to the
atrocity, NATO for the first time invoked its article 5 provision that
an attack on one member is an attack on all, signalling a willingness
to help America militarily. The Bush administration was slow to pick up
the offer. "Coalitions of the willing" took the place of traditional
alliances. Then, in Iraq, Mr Bush put his doctrine of prevention and
possible pre-emption into effect. In an age of global terror, this
said, self-defence meant acting alone and pre-emptively, if need be.
Working through the United Nations--ie, waiting for others--could be
suicide.
These two steps obviously had much in common. Both said that treaties
can constrain America's freedom of action and that, when they do, they
should be ignored. Both imply that the exercise of power alone may be
enough to achieve American aims. Still, the second step went beyond the
first. It proposed new rules for going to war and a substitute for
traditional alliances--the willing coalitions.
Over the past few weeks, however, these additions have begun to look
shaky. Is the Bush revolution in foreign affairs reaching its limits?
It may be. In May 2003, on the flight-deck of the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
Mr Bush argued that once upon a time, "military power was used to end a
regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a
nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime." Experience in
Iraq contradicts that optimism, or at least suggests that "freeing a
nation" requires more than just bringing down a troublesome regime.
Legitimacy, it turns out, matters. It does not spring up spontaneously
if American motives are pure, as some in the administration have
argued. And coalitions of the willing do little to confer legitimacy.
Moreover, as Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and Jim Lindsay
of the Council on Foreign Relations have argued, the doctrine of
pre-emption supposes that the intelligence services will be good enough
to warn America of threats before they are realised. The catalogue of
errors is not reassuring on this point.
Lastly, problems in Iraq have strained the unstable coalition that is
Mr Bush's foreign-policy team. Neo-conservatives, who argue that
America's destiny is to spread democracy round the world, are losing
influence. The world-view of assertive nationalists (notably Dick
Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of
defence), who say military might will be enough to deter America's
enemies, has not been dethroned. But it has been weakened, and their
unilateralist instincts look more problematic. The "soft power"
diplomats--Colin Powell and the State Department--have become more
important. All this raises questions about support for Mr Bush's
foreign policy even within his own cabinet.
As if to confirm the doubts, the past few months have seen a new look.
Having handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis and got the Security
Council's blessing, as it always meant to, America has also asked
Europeans to endorse its "Broader Middle East Initiative" and appealed
to NATO to help train Iraqi troops. The big question now is whether
these changes are part of a profound reappraisal of American foreign
policy, or whether they are just tactical adjustments to recent
difficulties.
The honest answer is that it is too early to be sure. But the changes
are probably tactical. Despite the presence of heavyweights in his
cabinet, Mr Bush has always been the author of America's foreign-policy
transformation, and he has repeatedly denied any new change of course.
This is not to be discounted; in foreign affairs, the president has
usually signalled what he is planning to do very clearly.
It is true that Iraq has raised doubts about the doctrine of
prevention and pre-emption. But the debate has shown that the
alternative "rules for going to war" are, from America's viewpoint, far
worse. This is the claim, particularly espoused by France and Germany,
that, except in the case of actual attack or imminent threat, countries
cannot use military force legitimately without the approval of the
Security Council. No American president would ever accept, or has ever
accepted, such an idea. If others insist that the alternative to
unilateralism is the UN, America will stick with unilateralism.
Most important, the underlying rationale of Mr Bush's transformed
policy has not really changed. This is that there is a huge gap in
military power between America and everyone else, that the country has
opportunities denied to anyone else and that traditional alliances are
therefore useful rather than necessary. Iraq has shown that the
exercise of American power is harder than the administration thought;
but the exercise of power is still what matters most to Mr Bush. In
that sense, his foreign policy is being refined, not retooled.
Mr Bush once campaigned as a proponent of a "humble" foreign policy.
In practice, he has not provided one. On the domestic front, he has
been equally surprising. And despite the narrowness of his mandate, he
has proved as polarising at home as he is abroad. Consider, next, the
peculiar character of the president's domestic conservatism.
A BIG-GOVERNMENT GUY
This is one of the most conservative politicians ever to inhabit the
White House. Mr Bush has fed red meat to the various groups that make
up the conservative coalition--opposition to abortion, gay marriage and
stem-cell research for social conservatives; the invasion of Iraq for
neo-conservatives; tax-breaks and deregulation for business
conservatives. He has driven liberals stark raving bonkers. "Among the
worst presidents in US history," proclaimed Jonathan Chait in the NEW
REPUBLIC. "Incomparably more dangerous than Reagan or any other
president in this nation's history," wrote Harold Meyerson in the
AMERICAN PROSPECT.
But exactly what sort of conservative is Mr Bush? Ever since Barry
Goldwater's quixotic bid for the White House in 1964, American
conservatism has been a small-government philosophy. Ronald Reagan
regarded government as the problem rather than the solution, and
therefore shrank social programmes. Newt Gingrich's troops assaulted
not just Lyndon Johnson's Great Society but also a pillar of FDR's New
Deal, the welfare system.
Mr Bush's track-record has been very different. While cutting taxes in
a dramatic way that Mr Reagan would surely have applauded, he has
relentlessly expanded both the scale and scope of central
government--in order to advance the conservative cause. Mr Bush has
tried to preside over the birth of a new political philosophy:
big-government conservatism.
The Bush presidency has seen the biggest increase in discretionary
spending since his fellow Texan, Johnson, was in the White House (see
chart 1). In his first term, according to the 2005 budget, total
federal spending will rise by 29%, more than triple the rate of
increase in Bill Clinton's second term. The Bush administration raised
spending on education from $36 billion in 2001 to $63 billion in 2004,
a 75% increase; it has also pushed through the biggest expansion of
Medicare, the federal health-care plan for the old, since the programme
was created in the 1960s. More people now work for the federal
government than at any time in history.
It could be argued that the expansion of government under Mr Bush is
the unfortunate consequence of events, particularly the September 11th
attacks. The terrorist threat more or less forced the government to
create a giant new homeland-security apparatus, which Mr Bush at first
opposed. Mr Bush has promised conservatives that he will try to get
spending under control; the 2005 budget envisions domestic
discretionary spending rising by only 0.5% and calls for the abolition
of 65 federal programmes, saving $4.9 billion.
NOT JUST HOMELAND SECURITY
Yet this argument seems unconvincing. The war on terror accounts for
only part of the increase in government spending. As for Mr Bush's
promise that he will eventually get spending under control, the White
House has already embraced commitments that could keep government
growing for years. On some estimates, the Medicare bill alone could end
up costing $2 trillion in its second decade.
Mr Bush's big-government conservatism goes beyond a mere blind response
to events. During the 2000 campaign, he made it clear that he had a
different attitude to government from his fellow conservatives. He sang
the praises of "focused, effective and energetic government". Rather
than calling for the abolition of the Department of Education, like the
rest of his fellow conservatives, he called for its expansion. He even
had a good word to say about Johnson's Great Society.
Mr Bush's big-government conservatism also goes beyond a mere
willingness to spend public money. He has reversed a long-standing
Republican commitment to decentralisation by giving the federal
government a greater role in setting education standards than it has
ever had before. He has also reversed a long-standing Republican
suspicion of government bossiness by trying to use government to
promote conservative values. The Education Department is promoting
abstinence in sex education. The Department of Health and Human
Services is trying to use the welfare system to advocate the virtues of
marriage and responsible fatherhood. John Ashcroft's Justice Department
has ridden over states' rights to prosecute people who believe in
assisted suicide and the medical use of marijuana.
Where has all this come from? Mr Bush turned to big-government
conservatism as an antidote to growing problems of the small-government
kind. As the 1990s wore on, Mr Gingrich and his merry band increasingly
tried America's patience with their bomb-throwing radicalism. The
middle classes had been happy to advocate tough love for the poor, but
they were much less happy when the tough love involved cuts to Medicare
or student loans. Not unfairly, Mr Bush calculated that making peace
with government was the only way to re-endear conservatism to the
middle class.
Many of his fervent supporters regarded tax cuts as their highest
priority: cuts that Mr Bush duly delivered. But many elements in the
conservative coalition also looked to government to solve their
problems. Business people wanted the government to subsidise their
industries at home and promote their interests abroad. Corporate
America had been calling for educational reform for years. Social
conservatives were keen on using government to promote "virtue" or
eradicate "vice" (from assisted suicide to pot-smoking), a position
highly attractive to a president who starts every cabinet meeting with
a prayer. The White House and the Republican majority in Congress
worked assiduously to shower government largesse on Republican-leaning
interest groups. Agricultural legislation involved a huge give-away to
agribusiness; prescription-drugs legislation provided a bonanza for the
pharmaceutical industry.
The neo-conservative intelligentsia has played as vital a role in
promoting big-government conservatism as it did in promoting the Iraq
war. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, sees the growth
of the state as "natural, indeed inevitable". His son Bill uses his
WEEKLY STANDARD magazine to lead a crusade to replace "leave-us-alone
conservatism" with "national-greatness conservatism". Mr Kristol and
his supporters argue that "wishing to be left alone isn't a governing
doctrine", and that loving your country while hating its government is
not a sustainable philosophical position. Besides, there is no need to
hate government if it is in the right (Republican) hands.
A LASTING PHILOSOPHY?
The most compelling argument in favour of Mr Bush's policies is that he
is doing more than just expanding government. He is increasingly tying
public spending to competition and accountability. The No Child Left
Behind Act, the most interesting reform of American education for a
generation, uses a combination of national standards and standardised
testing to measure children's progress: if too many children in a
particular school fail to hit the required standards, then parents have
the right to move them elsewhere. The Medicare reforms have been a way
of introducing medical savings accounts. The proposed individual
investment accounts in Social Security (federal pensions) will give
individuals more responsibility for managing their nest eggs. This
emphasis on accountability explains why public-sector unions loathe Mr
Bush, despite his big-spending ways.
Yet attempts to introduce competition in schools or health care have
not gone very far. There are good reasons to doubt whether the
educational bureaucracy will ever have the guts to close down failing
schools. The Bush administration signally failed to use the expansion
of Medicare as a lever for introducing structural reforms, such as
means-testing. Mr Bush's only real chance to build choice into the
heart of a government programme lies in his mooted Social Security
reforms.
Even if these programmes can be made to work, big-government
conservatism undoubtedly has drawbacks. The new creed's biggest problem
is simple: if you cut taxes deeply while increasing spending lavishly,
you end up with a gigantic deficit. This newspaper is not about to
argue that cutting taxes is wrong in principle: the Republican Party's
instinct that it is better to leave money in voters' pockets than to
give it to bureaucrats has been one of its most attractive features.
But big, persistent budget deficits also put a burden on people. If the
Republicans continue to tax like a small-government party and spend
like a big-government one, deficits could average $500 billion a year
for the next decade--an alarming prospect. Mr Bush should be preparing
for the retirement of the huge baby-boomer generation.
Nor is big-government conservatism the political cure-all that it might
seem. It is alienating big chunks of the Republican coalition.
Libertarians don't want to be told whether they can smoke pot by Mr
Ashcroft. Old-fashioned conservatives don't want to see Washington
extending its power over local schools. And good-government types don't
want to see the deficit balloon out of control.
Senator John McCain has reprimanded Mr Bush for failing to use his veto
to control a Congress which is spending money "like a drunken sailor".
Rush Limbaugh has complained that Mr Bush's legacy may be the greatest
increase in domestic spending, and one of the greatest setbacks to
liberty, in modern times. "This may be compassionate", says Mr
Limbaugh, "but it is not conservatism at all."
A third problem lies with unintended consequences. Forty years ago,
the founding fathers of neo-conservatism criticised the Great Society
on the grounds that its soaring intentions often produced bad results:
rent control reduces the availability of affordable housing, for
example. The biggest unintended consequence of Mr Bush's efforts may be
that big-government conservatism morphs into big-government liberalism.
Government is by its nature a knife that cuts to the left, in part
because government employees tend to be on the left, in part because
government programmes promote dependency. Rather than twisting
government to conservative ends, the Republicans may simply be creating
yet more ammunition for future Democratic administrations.
Mr Bush is nothing if not ambitious. If his new philosophy endures, he
will be a transformative figure in the history of the modern
conservative movement. If it fails, he will be seen as a domestic
policymaker who doomed himself by ignoring the central insight of the
revolution that began with Goldwater: that the essence of conservatism
lies in shrinking government.
Mr Bush's presidency has been radical not only in what he has tried to
do, but in the way he has gone about doing it. His term has seen an
extraordinary change in style. Partly by his own efforts, partly as a
result of underlying forces, he has increased the power of the
presidency at the expense of other branches of government. This is the
third great project of his presidency, the least noticed outside
Washington, DC, and perhaps the most worrying.
IMPERIUM REVISITED
Mr Bush came to office arguing that restrictions on presidential
authority, especially since Watergate, had harmed decision-making. The
implication is that good government requires a certain period of
privacy in which officials can thrash out policies. The public should
judge only the result. In 2002, his vice-president, Dick Cheney, said,
"I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the
president of the United States to do his job." He said he and Mr Bush
had talked about the need to "pass on our offices in better shape than
we found them to our successors." They have succeeded, after a fashion,
but at a heavy cost.
Unified government, with the administration and Congress under the
same party's control, tends to boost presidential authority anyway--the
more so this time, as the Republican Party is fairly disciplined. Tom
DeLay, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, has defined
his job simply: "How do I advance the president's agenda?" The party's
narrow majority keeps troops in line. Lest there be any backsliding, Mr
Bush's personal campaigning in the 2002 mid-term elections reminded
congressmen and senators of their interest in keeping on good terms
with him.
More important, wars always increase the powers of the executive
branch. Because it has implications for America's domestic freedoms,
the war on terror may well end up increasing executive power more than
most.
But Mr Bush's ambitions have gone beyond what these underlying forces
make inevitable. One measure of his ambition was the claim of the
Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department (the administration's
main source of legal advice), made in August 2002, that the president's
authority as commander-in-chief was in effect unlimited in the conduct
of a war. As the legal opinion put it, he "enjoys complete discretion
in the exercise of his commander-in-chief authority."
This claim showed how expansive Mr Bush's view of his powers could be.
No former president had gone that far. In fact, it was too far. The
Supreme Court said the constitution did not warrant such a reading and
struck down the policy based on it: holding detainees from the war in
Afghanistan without charge. But the case was unusual only in that the
high court overruled Mr Bush. More commonly, he has had his way.
The most important check on a president's authority is Congress,
formally the sovereign power. To see how Mr Bush and his allies have
treated the legislature, consider the Medicare bill.
In January 2003, the White House sent Congress a proposal for reform
of the health-care system. The price tag, it said, was $400 billion.
The real cost was $534 billion. Medicare's chief actuary was told not
to answer congressional questions on pain of dismissal. After the House
and Senate passed different versions of the proposal, the Republicans
began work to reconcile the two. They refused to let five of the
Democrats nominated to the process take part in deliberations--and
rewrote the bill.
Even then, they fell short of a majority when voting began, at 3am.
Defying precedent, the House leadership held the vote open for three
hours while arms were twisted. The bill finally passed just before 6am.
Norm Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute,
called it the ugliest breach of congressional standards in modern
history.
Making laws has always been like making sausages (don't look closely).
When the Democrats were in charge, they did not always run Congress as
prescribed in the civics textbooks. Some of Congress's hallowed
traditions could do with pruning, especially the power of committees.
But the Republicans have put forward none of this in mitigation.
Instead, they have claimed, in essence, that the ends justify the
means. Mr Bush, they say, has pushed big tax cuts and education and
health-care reforms through a closely divided, bitterly partisan
institution. The alternative to such strong-arm tactics was legislative
gridlock, which, they argue, would have been worse.
Even if you think the ends are good, the means have inflicted
institutional harm on Congress. The committee system for amending bills
has all but collapsed. Bills are now written by the leaders and their
staffs, in concert with the White House. Debate is often cut off: many
controversial measures are voted on under a "closed rule", which bars
amendments. The conference stage, when different versions of a bill are
reconciled, has been turned from an occasion for compromise into yet
another opportunity for partisan gain. Sometimes the conference
committee does not meet at all. Sometimes Republicans have ignored the
rule that says the committee can only iron out differences, and have
fundamentally altered bills at the last minute. The budget process is
in tatters.
DOZING WATCHDOGS
As for Congress's other main job--oversight of the
administration--that has declined too, with a few exceptions (the
Senate Armed Services Committee held useful hearings on the Abu Ghraib
scandal). Serious investigation has been left to special commissions,
such as the one that looked into the September 11th attacks. The
responsibility for this lies largely with congressional Republicans:
they are reluctant to investigate one of their own. But Mr Bush has not
exactly shown deference to Congress's oversight role. The White House
refused to let Tom Ridge, the head of homeland security, testify in
2002. It declared it would not answer questions from Democrats on
budget committees. Mr Bush refused to testify before the 9/11
commission. In all these cases, the administration finally backed down.
But at a time of dramatic change, the watchdogs of Congress have been
dozing.
Congressional oversight is at the heart of the administration's claim
that excessive intrusiveness is harming executive decision-making. The
CAUSE CeLeBRE in this case was the new energy policy. When Democrats
attempted to force the vice-president to reveal whom he had met while
formulating an energy bill, Mr Cheney refused, arguing that the
constitution protects the president and vice-president from
congressional attempts to reveal details of their deliberations. As the
solicitor-general argued to the Supreme Court, "Congress may neither
intrude on the president's ability to perform these [deliberative]
functions, nor authorise private litigants to use the court to do so."
On this occasion, Mr Cheney prevailed. His victory will encourage
future administrations.
But the administration has not stopped there. The power of the
president is limited not only by the might of Congress but by a host of
smaller laws and administrative rules: freedom-of-information requests,
the power to classify documents, and civil-service procedures. Partly
in response to domestic security worries, the discretionary power of
the executive has increased substantially in these areas.
The best-known examples come from the Patriot Act, which boosted
law-enforcement powers and surveillance. That act, at least, was passed
by Congress and is subject to congressional review. More commonly, the
administration has increased its powers by asserting them. Soon after
September 11th, Mr Ashcroft issued new guidelines on
freedom-of-information requests. The attorney-general reversed the
Clinton-era policy of rejecting such requests only if to allow them
would cause "substantial harm". Public-interest groups complain that
requests are now often denied, even over matters that seem to have
nothing to do with security, such as pollution or car safety.
According to figures from the National Archives, around 44m documents
were classified in the first two years of the current
administration--as many as in the whole of Mr Clinton's second term.
More officials--including, for some reason, the secretary of
agriculture--have been given the power to classify materials. This is
more than just a response to September 11th. Mr Bush has issued an
executive order overturning the rule that presidential papers are
automatically declassified 12 years after presidents leave office;
instead, he said, former presidents could decide whether to disclose
their papers during their lifetimes, and the incumbent president would
also have power of review.
IN THE DETAILS
A subset of this reaction against scrutiny is the use of what might be
called government by small print: slipping additions into law at the
last minute or tinkering with the wording of rules that implement laws.
As a recent series in the WASHINGTON POST argued, such changes often
appear minor but can have a big impact. By changing the word "waste" to
"fill" in a rule governing coal-mining, for instance, the
administration allowed an increase in strip-mining in West Virginia. By
adding two sentences about scientific evidence to an unrelated budget
bill, it gave itself increased authority to rule in regulatory disputes.
Perhaps the most disturbing way in which the administration has
increased its power has been through its public-relations machine.
Thomas Jefferson said long ago that a well-informed electorate is the
most important constraint on government. By issuing partial and
sometimes misleading information, the Bush administration has hampered
such scrutiny.
Consider for instance the arguments for tax cuts. Here, Mr Bush made
claims about the cost of the cuts and their distributional impact that
he should have known were misleading. In 2000, he claimed the first
round of cuts would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, a quarter of the
budget surplus at that point. On his own figures, the share was a
third, not a quarter, and he arrived at the figure only through
outrageous accounting gimmicks that he is now campaigning to forbid.
He also asserted that the cuts would provide "the greatest help for
those most in need", providing a Treasury study to back up his claim.
In the past, Treasury studies have been impartial. But this one arrived
at its conclusion by leaving out the parts of the tax cut that most
benefited the wealthiest (such as the repeal of the estate tax). By any
normal measure, the tax cuts have been regressive--hardly "the greatest
help for those most in need".
Taking facts out of context, politicising government studies and
presenting anomalous examples as typical are hardly unique to the Bush
administration. But they still do damage. The system of checks and
balances--indeed, democracy itself--requires voters to be able to
understand the impact of actions taken on their behalf, so they can
apportion credit or blame fairly. If it is impossible to tell how much
of the administration's arguments for war were vindicated or disproved,
or who the tax cuts really helped, then proper public accounting is
impossible.
Beyond that, members of the administration have occasionally acted in
ways that have discouraged public debate directly. In May 2002, the
White House's communications director, Dan Bartlett, argued in the
WASHINGTON POST that Democratic criticisms of administration actions
before September 11th were "exactly what our opponents, our enemies,
want us to do." Mr Ashcroft had earlier conflated civil-liberties
activists with terrorist sympathisers, telling Congress: "To those who
scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is
this: your tactics only aid terrorists." All this came near to arguing
that, after September 11th, debate itself could be treasonous.
Mr Bush has frequently said that voters will give their verdict in
November, and that he looks forward to it. But quadrennial elections
are not the only means of restraining government. The genius of the
American system is that administrations must work within a system of
checks and balances. These checks have themselves been checked.
Congress is the main competing source of power. It has become more
like an adjunct to the administration. Information encourages public
scrutiny. The flow has been reduced. The administration's actions are
filtered through civil-service rules and procedures. The rules have
been chopped and changed. A free press is essential to the working of
democracy. Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, rejected that
view, arguing "I don't believe you [the press] have a check-and-balance
function." On occasion, the administration has even crossed the line
separating the interests of the state from the party by using
taxpayers' money to finance advertising for the Medicare bill.
Almost all governments bend the truth. This one has seldom resorted to
outright falsehood; instead, the administration has manipulated public
information and breached basic standards of political conduct in
Congress, the civil service and public debate. Whatever the merits of
increasing presidential authority, Mr Bush has achieved his aim less by
winning support for more power than by weakening the authority of other
institutions.
IN THE ROUND
Mr Bush's supporters may regard carping on about this expansion of
powers as a distraction from other more visible achievements of his
presidency. Look, they may argue, at the way that the White House has
set about reducing nuclear proliferation, or at his plans to build an
ownership society at home, or at the long-term economic stimulus of his
tax reform. From the other side, his critics complain that the
administration has trashed the environment, or worsened inequality, or
schemed to roll back abortion rights.
It usually takes some time for the true significance of any presidency
to emerge. Mr Bush's most contentious projects may come to seem
relatively unimportant. For now, perhaps the most remarkable thing
about this presidency is the extent to which it has already confounded
expectations. When Mr Bush was elected, it was widely believed that his
power would be slight and he would achieve little. For better or worse,
those predictions were refuted. Whether this will help or harm him in
November remains to be seen.
See this article with graphics and related items at http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm/none/?story_id=S%27%29%28%28%2EQ%21%2F%26%200% 22D%0A
Go to http://www.economist.com for more global news, views and analysis from the Economist Group.
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Posted on: 04 September 2004 by Berlin Fritz
I must admit I did like Bush's comment about the quality of his English and now that Arnies in the runnin he's really ´got problem's innit.
Graham George W:
President Clinton's Overture tinkled from 1805 - 1812 as you all no doubt know ?
Graham George W:
President Clinton's Overture tinkled from 1805 - 1812 as you all no doubt know ?
Posted on: 04 September 2004 by Steve Toy
Ludwig,
That was rather a long post, and quite good for its thoroughness. You'd have been well pissed off if your PC had frozen up just as you were about to hit the "post" button...
For the safety of this planet, and future prosperity of the US lets hope that Bush doesn't win. We at least agree on that point.
Regards,
Steve.
[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Sun 05 September 2004 at 5:56.]
That was rather a long post, and quite good for its thoroughness. You'd have been well pissed off if your PC had frozen up just as you were about to hit the "post" button...
For the safety of this planet, and future prosperity of the US lets hope that Bush doesn't win. We at least agree on that point.
Regards,
Steve.
[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Sun 05 September 2004 at 5:56.]
Posted on: 06 September 2004 by Wolf
I've just been on a trip from Los Angeles to Seattle and back. looking at bumpre stickers it's 2-1 for Kerry and the anti Bush ones won hands down in creativity and fun factor.
I sure hope Kerry wins
Life is analogue
I sure hope Kerry wins
Life is analogue
Posted on: 06 September 2004 by Bhoyo
I'm convinced GWB has got it sewn up already: He's the incumbent; he's opened a 10-point, post-convention lead in the polls; his fixers are still in charge in Florida (and other key states); the Electoral College (note to Brits: this is the thing that matters) looks certain to be his; Kerry's campaign is inept, the GOP's in malignantly brilliant.
For all the important reasons (jobs, schools, health care, the environment, peace and prosperity), most educated people would prefer to see Kerry in charge. But the ill-informed and the self-serving hold a slight majority.
Oh well - Hillary in '08 anyone?
Regards,
Davie
For all the important reasons (jobs, schools, health care, the environment, peace and prosperity), most educated people would prefer to see Kerry in charge. But the ill-informed and the self-serving hold a slight majority.
Oh well - Hillary in '08 anyone?
Regards,
Davie
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by herm
It looks very bad indeed.
BTW compliments to Mick for the most hilarious post yet, saying Bush is a you see what you get candidate. Just as with the previous convention / nomination, nothing of all those optimistic, compassionate, or even conservative things that were put on display will ever transpire in policy. As soon as the elections are over, the Dark Force will resume (and of course the Dark Force is pretty busy now demolishing Kerry in the most blatantly untruthful way).
Still, Kerry mostly has himself to blame. As Justin (?) said, it's basically so easy. The only question Kerry has to ask over and over again is: are you better off now than four years ago. An overwhelming majority of the population would have to say no. And it's not just a strictly economic thing; it's also about a sense of security.
BTW compliments to Mick for the most hilarious post yet, saying Bush is a you see what you get candidate. Just as with the previous convention / nomination, nothing of all those optimistic, compassionate, or even conservative things that were put on display will ever transpire in policy. As soon as the elections are over, the Dark Force will resume (and of course the Dark Force is pretty busy now demolishing Kerry in the most blatantly untruthful way).
Still, Kerry mostly has himself to blame. As Justin (?) said, it's basically so easy. The only question Kerry has to ask over and over again is: are you better off now than four years ago. An overwhelming majority of the population would have to say no. And it's not just a strictly economic thing; it's also about a sense of security.
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by matthewr
"he's opened a 10-point, post-convention lead in the polls"
His post-convention bounce was actually only +2% (for a 4% swing) in the GALLUP poll which is hostorically low for a convention. Ok Kerry managed a 0% bounce, but it's not that bad and if a week is a long time in politics, two months is an age.
What's happening with the debates this time? Is Bush going to weasel out of them? Or else insist on some farce like pre-prepared questions and answers?
Matthew
His post-convention bounce was actually only +2% (for a 4% swing) in the GALLUP poll which is hostorically low for a convention. Ok Kerry managed a 0% bounce, but it's not that bad and if a week is a long time in politics, two months is an age.
What's happening with the debates this time? Is Bush going to weasel out of them? Or else insist on some farce like pre-prepared questions and answers?
Matthew
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by Joe Petrik
Matthew,
Bush and Kery will have a debate, but the shouting heads on Faux News Channel will no doubt spin the outcome in Dubya favour. (Frightening statistic I read in the local paper last week: undecided voters get their news predominantly from fair and balanced FNC.)
Joe
quote:
What's happening with the debates this time? Is Bush going to weasel out of them? Or else insist on some farce like pre-prepared questions and answers?
Bush and Kery will have a debate, but the shouting heads on Faux News Channel will no doubt spin the outcome in Dubya favour. (Frightening statistic I read in the local paper last week: undecided voters get their news predominantly from fair and balanced FNC.)
Joe
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by ErikL
How Low Can Dick Go?
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again [by terrorists] and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting...
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again [by terrorists] and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting...
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by ErikL
Bush on Healthcare Costs
"Too many O-B-G-Y-N's aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country."
No, I'm not kidding. He said it yesterday.
"Too many O-B-G-Y-N's aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country."
No, I'm not kidding. He said it yesterday.
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by Justin
quote:
Originally posted by Ludwig:
_How Low Can Dick Go?_
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because _if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again [by terrorists] and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States_," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting...
I read this too as well. I can't say that I am not surprised. It was only a matter of time before a claim like this was made. It's also undoubtedly true, of course. The eventuality of another terrorist attack in the US is a 100% certainty - and the odds are almost as good that it will happen in the enxt four years no matter who is president. So, even if Kerry wins, he'll be portrayed as having blown the fight on terrorism as soon as we get hit again.
And, to add insult to injury, Bush has managed to put into place what would otherwise be called a sort of "poison pill" in the event Kerry wins. Simply, Bush has "borrowed" heavily against the future US economy in order to "buy" favor today with his friends and the electorate. He's spending like a drunken debutante at Bloomingdales while, at the same time, cutting taxes. He's stealing from the future to buy social programs for the electorate and tax cuts for the rich. The problem is that there's going to be a "margin call" soon, and my money says it will be on Kerry's watch (if he wins), which means he loses even though he had nothing to do with the situation.
Judd
Posted on: 07 September 2004 by Berlin Fritz
Steve Earl for President.
Graham George Of Pollfame
Graham George Of Pollfame
Posted on: 08 September 2004 by matthewr
"the odds are almost as good that it will happen in the enxt four years no matter who is president"
Surely it's more likely that a man with such a poor track record in delaing with terrorism (in all sorts of ways)? I mean we know Bush & Cheney are incompetence and dangerous and it seems deeply unlikely tha tKerry could do any worse.
Matthew
Surely it's more likely that a man with such a poor track record in delaing with terrorism (in all sorts of ways)? I mean we know Bush & Cheney are incompetence and dangerous and it seems deeply unlikely tha tKerry could do any worse.
Matthew
Posted on: 08 September 2004 by ejl
A bit of ammunition for Kerry. The Bush campaign's attempt to put Bush's dismal service in the National Guard behind them has run into some brand new roadblocks, three of which look pretty embarrassing. Details
Matthew's completely right that the 10-point post-convention-bounce thing was a completely distorted result and was not reflected in other post-convention polls. I'm frankly suspicious of what was going on with that Time/Newsweek poll, which has been rejected as having substantive methodological problems by other pollsters. I'm suspicious because it was obviously used (as in the linked article) to create a sense of deep slippage for Kerry and to help generate the (false) illusion of an inevitable Bush victory. The Bushies would, of course, like nothing better than to cultivate this illusion, knowing full well that it will reduce voter turnout and thereby work to their advantage.
There are several weeks left and this is far from over. I still think Kerry has at least an even chance of winning.
Matthew's completely right that the 10-point post-convention-bounce thing was a completely distorted result and was not reflected in other post-convention polls. I'm frankly suspicious of what was going on with that Time/Newsweek poll, which has been rejected as having substantive methodological problems by other pollsters. I'm suspicious because it was obviously used (as in the linked article) to create a sense of deep slippage for Kerry and to help generate the (false) illusion of an inevitable Bush victory. The Bushies would, of course, like nothing better than to cultivate this illusion, knowing full well that it will reduce voter turnout and thereby work to their advantage.
There are several weeks left and this is far from over. I still think Kerry has at least an even chance of winning.
Posted on: 08 September 2004 by ErikL
And as someone here predicted, Bush is using Hurricane Frances as a political opportunity, just as he did Reagan's death:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/campaign/09bush.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/campaign/09bush.html
Posted on: 08 September 2004 by ErikL
I agree that the Time/Newsweek polling is suspicious. If last week was a beta to see how the left would react, fear the poll results that'll come out just before the election.
Where's our press? Do they ever ask "hey, are these polls I'm hand-fed legit?" before splashing the results all over every front page?
Where's our press? Do they ever ask "hey, are these polls I'm hand-fed legit?" before splashing the results all over every front page?
Posted on: 08 September 2004 by Berlin Fritz
It's gonna get a whole lot dirtier chaps, "We ain't seen nuffin Yet !"
Graham George Of Coddywindfarms
Graham George Of Coddywindfarms
Posted on: 09 September 2004 by Justin
can somebody point me in the direction of commentary regarding the Newsweek poll. I have not read that they are suspect (though I hope they are). I heard on CNN this morning that Bush has opened up a 6 point lead in my home state (Ohio), which may or may not have been based on that newsweek poll - I don't know.
It's amazing to me that anybody could watch either convention and say "hey, now I know THAT's the guy I want to vote for". If you are "on the fence" then I would have guessed that you already take everything said by both sides with a grain of salt. That being the case, why would a self-serving convention speech sway you one way or the other. It all makes me a bit sick to my stomache.
And still, I simply am not hearing much in the way of campaigning from Kerry. Why don't managers hire advertising agencies to run their campaigns? It's their business to sell something to the American people. I think the democrat adds have been largely ineffective. They should do one about these new service records - they should do one about how we are actually losing cities in Iraq - they should do one about how Bush has basically ignored Bin Laden up till now (he's putting Pakistan to the fire at the moment - they just bombed something today - surprise, surprise.
Why does Air America Radio have better Bush soundbites than the Kerry Campaign does?
Judd
It's amazing to me that anybody could watch either convention and say "hey, now I know THAT's the guy I want to vote for". If you are "on the fence" then I would have guessed that you already take everything said by both sides with a grain of salt. That being the case, why would a self-serving convention speech sway you one way or the other. It all makes me a bit sick to my stomache.
And still, I simply am not hearing much in the way of campaigning from Kerry. Why don't managers hire advertising agencies to run their campaigns? It's their business to sell something to the American people. I think the democrat adds have been largely ineffective. They should do one about these new service records - they should do one about how we are actually losing cities in Iraq - they should do one about how Bush has basically ignored Bin Laden up till now (he's putting Pakistan to the fire at the moment - they just bombed something today - surprise, surprise.
Why does Air America Radio have better Bush soundbites than the Kerry Campaign does?
Judd
Posted on: 09 September 2004 by Justin
Along the lines of the shitbag we have in Iraq, here is what Andrew Sullivan (who writes for Sunday Times of London, Time and is own blog) has to say about it (quoting somebody at the war college):
"No one that I know of, to include the most pessimistic experts, predicted a full-scale insurgency would break out within a couple of months of the overthrow of the old regime ... the current situation may be sustained for a very long time." - Steven Metz, a guerrilla warfare expert at the Army War College. It is becoming harder and harder to ignore the grim news from Iraq. I take absolutely no pleasure in facing up to what the war has become in Iraq. But the bottom line is: we're not winning. And the gap between the president's rhetoric - which could have been crafted a year ago - and the reality on the ground keeps growing. One thing I've noticed from the pro-Bush blogs and pundits. None of them mentions what's actually happening in Iraq now. They daren't. If Kerry is at all smart, he will."
Sullivan is (or was) a pro-Iraq war fiscal conservative who, I'm convinced, is going to back Kerry this election. Not insignificant as his is the most read blog on the net (as of a few months ago).
Judd
"No one that I know of, to include the most pessimistic experts, predicted a full-scale insurgency would break out within a couple of months of the overthrow of the old regime ... the current situation may be sustained for a very long time." - Steven Metz, a guerrilla warfare expert at the Army War College. It is becoming harder and harder to ignore the grim news from Iraq. I take absolutely no pleasure in facing up to what the war has become in Iraq. But the bottom line is: we're not winning. And the gap between the president's rhetoric - which could have been crafted a year ago - and the reality on the ground keeps growing. One thing I've noticed from the pro-Bush blogs and pundits. None of them mentions what's actually happening in Iraq now. They daren't. If Kerry is at all smart, he will."
Sullivan is (or was) a pro-Iraq war fiscal conservative who, I'm convinced, is going to back Kerry this election. Not insignificant as his is the most read blog on the net (as of a few months ago).
Judd
Posted on: 09 September 2004 by ErikL
quote:
Originally posted by Matthew Robinson:
What's happening with the debates this time? Is Bush going to weasel out of them? Or else insist on some farce like pre-prepared questions and answers?
Well,
"President Bush may skip one of the three debates that have been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates and accepted by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Republican officials said yesterday. The officials said Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in the crucial state of Missouri.
The Bush-Cheney campaign announced that its debate negotiation team will be led by James A. Baker III, who was secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush. Baker headed the Bush campaign's Florida recount response in 2000 and is the current president's personal envoy on Iraqi debt resolution. Baker negotiated debates in 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992. As chief of staff to Bush's father in 1992, he took a cautious stance with the view that a sitting president has little to gain and much to lose in debates, according to accounts at the time.
Bush aides refused to discuss their opening position. Officials familiar with the issue said he plans to accept the commission's first debate, which is to focus on domestic policy, and the third one, which is to focus on foreign policy. The audience for the second debate, to be at Washington University in St. Louis, was to be picked by the Gallup Organization. The commission said participants should be undecided voters from the St. Louis area. A presidential adviser said campaign officials were concerned that people could pose as undecided when they actually are partisans."
Posted on: 09 September 2004 by ejl
quote:
can somebody point me in the direction of commentary regarding the Newsweek poll. I have not read that they are suspect (though I hope they are).
Judd,
Here's something from yesterday.
Adding to the uncertainty, the hurricanes may wind up constituting yet another wildcard. All forecast models now have Ivan pegged to hit Florida as a major storm. Massive destruction would mean a lower voter turnout in Florida, increasing Bush's chances. And needless to say, the already dicey voting machine problem will only be made worse if large swaths of Florida lie in ruins.