July 2, 2007
More on Imperial Presidencies II Posted by Alexander Burns at 11:40 AM EST Joshua Zeitz’s post this morning raises some concerns about so-called imperial Presidencies, and also places recent events concerning the Office of the Vice President in a broader historical context. He cites both John Kennedy and Richard Nixon as examples of Presidents who sometimes overstepped the bounds of propriety and legality in their use of presidential powers. Dick Cheney’s more immediate use of “unchecked executive authority” is especially troublesome to Mr. Zeitz. His basic point: “There’s a distinction to be drawn between an enhanced executive branch—one with the flexibility to respond to national security threats—and an imperial Presidency that knowingly flouts the law, administrative codes, and the Constitution.” I’d generally concur, but with a few points of clarification and elaboration. The first is the observation that Vice President Cheney’s escapades over the last six-and-a-half years have been alarming, but that I’m not sure they really fall in line with the earlier examples of Kennedy and Nixon. The key difference, of course, is that while those old rivals of 1960 both overstepped the bounds of their authority, the authority they exercised was still the highest in the land. Cheney, on the other hand, is using a basically ornamental office as that of a pluripotent minister without portfolio. In my judgment, the most surprising and disconcerting information that emerged from last week’s Washington Post series, “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” was the fact that Cheney has occasionally employed his vice presidential prerogatives to undermine President Bush’s agenda. In 2003, he helped scupper one of Bush’s favorite tax initiatives in order to advance one of his own. More subtly, but also more insidiously, he has been a master of promoting policy ideas, like coercive interrogation, without identifying himself as their author. If George Bush is an imperial President, I’m not sure what that makes Dick Cheney. But the notion that the Vice President has a set of powers totally distinct from those of the President is incompatible with the American tradition of a unitary executive. Indeed, it’s hard for me to think of George Bush as a truly imperial President, given that he’s apparently unable to rein in his own sidekick. Looking at the White House’s official statements from last week concerning Cheney’s assertion that he’s not a member of the executive branch, it is notable just how little the President’s office actually tried to stick up for the V.P. One wonders whether President Bush is a little tired of putting up with the most inconveniently meddling Vice President since John Calhoun. Given the apparent cleavages within the executive branch, it seems to me that the Bush administration has been less effective at unleashing the powers of the imperial Presidency, as previously exercised by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, et al., than it has been at destroying Washington’s customary mechanisms of balancing authority. Compliant Republican congressional caucuses have neutered the governmental processes that would normally check someone like Cheney. President Bush’s much-vaunted respect for personal loyalty has left characters like Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales in office long beyond the point when any earlier President would have canned them for being incompetent or politically inconvenient. The consequence of this has not necessarily been a hugely empowered Oval Office, à la Kennedy and Nixon, but rather an executive branch whose members (even reluctant ones like Cheney) aren’t effectively accountable to anyone, including the President. The second point I’d make in response to Mr. Zeitz is that while his distinction between muscular and extralegal presidential action is intellectually sound, I am not convinced that this categorical division plays out in practice. In his post, he notes the executive excesses of Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush. By even a conservative assessment, one would have to add Lyndon Johnson, with his lying, fiat-based approach to war making, and Ronald Reagan, with his patently illegal clandestine policies in Latin America and Western Asia, to any list of inappropriately overbearing Presidents. Even if one stops there and doesn’t try to indict any other leaders, that means half the White House occupants in the last 50 years have abused the office while reaching for imperial security powers. Those who have not, including Ford, Carter, and Clinton, have largely been unremarkable and unassertive leaders and have hesitated to engage in anything resembling imperial behavior. Given this moderately strong correlation, I wonder whether there isn’t reason to suggest that even necessary expansions of presidential power are, to some extent, corrupting. I’m inclined to agree with Fred Smoler that it’s good for Presidents to have a wide range of options open to them when it comes to the use of force. I’m also pretty convinced, though, that the abuses that usually attend such presidential prerogatives are inescapable. They are necessary failings that Americans must accept if we want a flexible and extremely powerful President. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether this is a good tradeoff, but it is in any case part of a dilemma that has long resisted any satisfactory resolution.
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