The PresidencyUnitary Executive Theory and the Imperial PresidencyThe Court-Authorized Search of Mar-a-Lago Was “Unprecedented” — But That’s Not the Real Story (8/12/2022)Future-proofing the presidencyProponents of Post-Trump Curbs on Executive Power Prepare New Push (9/9/2021)End the Imperial Presidency (8/25/2021)In Last 6 Elections, There Were Near-Misses in 2020 and 2004 and Second-Place Presidents in 2000 and 2016Because the Electoral College decides, States vote for President, not people. Gerrymandering can create one party States in which legislatures get to decide who wins, not voters. Presidents are most likely not the voter's choice. If you are a mob boss, it’s good to be the President. You can do anything. You can’t be prosecuted, You can pardon your associates and you can become very wealthy. You can use your military to punish dissent. You can use DOJ to punish your enemies, and reward your friends. The Supreme Court ruled that you have immunity for official duties. Trump admired authoritarians, acted out the authoritarians playbook, mused that he might be President for life, and is working elections to assure one party rule. The Supreme Court could have stopped him, but didn’t. As Republican cult-like Senators blocked impeachment and vital legislation, Congress was paralyzed. Government is dysfunctional in the face of a deadly pandemic. Republicans worked for decades to create a unitary Presidency resulting in Trump, who refused oversight or Congressional subpoenas, fired Inspector Generals, decapitated the DOJ, removed prosecutors investigating him from SDNY, EDNY, hid tax returns which may show his dependence on Russian money, seemed to pander to Putin, and pardoned criminal associates. It seemed Trump would like to be a king. Let him become one, like European Royalty. He could cut ribbons, preside over ceremonies, sign official documents, but leave policy to the people’s assembly. If we have a dictator, the Constitution has failed, anyway it is long overdue for an overhaul. Democracy is better than dictatorship. arguments in defense of the centralization of power and rising authoritarianism are always different, but the results are always the same: corruption, stagnation, dictatorship, repression, violence. Gary Kasparov Strongman politics and boss-man rule, in simplest form, is the story of mankind. So rather than search for the special circumstances that make it rise (economic anxiety, racial prejudice ?) , we should accept the truth that it can always rise, that the lure of a closed authoritarian society is one permanently present in human affairs, and that real question is not what makes it happen but what, for brief periods of historical time, has kept it from happening. A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism by Adam Gopnik (p110) Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment. Revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy) Anti-democratic leaders are often identifiable before they come to power. They have 4 traits: weak commitment to the democratic rules of the game; denial of the legitimacy of opponents; toleration or encouragement of violence; readiness to curtail the civil liberties of rivals and critics. Donald Trump met all of these tests. The Republican Party failed to do its job of gatekeeper to vet its candidates. The price was not to lose an election, but to lose democracy. The problem with presidentialism is that it trains citizens to look for a strong leader to run democracy for us instead of remembering that that's our job. And it does this in a number of ways. First of all, I think it infantilizes citizens. It teaches us to see the president as the big father of democracy who is going to take care of all the problems for us and handle all of our disagreements. And so that makes us lazy and a little bit childish in our expectations about our responsibilities for our political system. It credits the president with super-heroic powers. Then, that allows him to operate often extralegally and unilaterally, and it teaches us to always want him always to have more power when things are wrong instead of asking why he has so much. Dana D. Nelson "Congress must govern with a President who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct, We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don't answer to him." Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 8/31/2017 "In the United States, the dissolution of law in the second half of the twentieth century accelerated in the twenty-first. In the first eight years of the new century, the claim of emergency and the momentum toward unconstrained executive power became increasingly legible, with a presidential office that sanctioned the practice of torture, detention without charge, widespread surveillance of its citizens, and a private mercenary army answerable only to the president. The first in this list - the practice of torture - carried the United States into the deepest region of war crime. The international and national prohibition on torture is not just one law among many but a foundational prohibition underlying the larger framework of laws." Elaine Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency
The legal scholar Bruce Ackerman has characterized the last fifty years of American presidential politics as a series of power-grabs by the executive. The biggest involves the politicization of he military, which has been increasingly co-opted into executive rule. Faced with a recalcitrant Congress, presidents turn to soldiers to get things done. Ackerman sees two dangers. One is that a subservient high command might greatly expand the powers of an extremist presidency by doing what it is told. The other is that the president ends up doing what he is told by his generals, who have become an indispensable part of he administration. The commander-in-chief then becomes a figurehead for what is essentially military rule. Are the generals obeying politicians or the politicians obeying generals ? Once the lines get blurred, it is hard to know for sure. How Democracy Ends: David Runciman Nuclear weapons undo governments and undo anything that could be meant by democracy ... We had a choice: get rid of nuclear weapons or get rid of Congress and the citizens. We got rid of Congress and the citizens. Thermonuclear Monarchy, Choosing Between Democracy and Doom Elaine Scarry 46 and Done: Why Joe Biden Should Be Our Last President (2/2021)Trump's presidency has amended the Constitution. Not formally, of course, but informally...which matters just as much.Links:The American Presidency Project Inflation of the Presidency (video) Howie's Presidential and Political Page The War Powers Resolution After 30 Years (3/11/2004) The Living Room Candidate
(Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012) Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy? (2/2/2021)Is Trump Abusing Presidential Pardons? (12/23/2020)How to Reform the Presidency After the Wreckage of Trump (12/18/2020)A History of Presidential Lies (8/12/2020)A pandemic is tailor-made for dictators (4/5/2020)The Constitution already says there are two ways that the president becomes commander in chief. One, when the country is attacked, in which case he can begin to make arrangements to defend us. The other is if there’s a congressional declaration of war. This distinction is also incredibly clear in Scandinavian constitutions, which say that the executive can act to defend the country up to the border but not one step beyond without the authorization of the legislature." Elaine Scarry The President is more powerful than the king we sought to overthrow. For a long time Republicans have been making a bad mistake enhancing the power of the Presidency assisted by the Supreme Court. There is not much effort in vetting candidates. Trumps's tax returns, grades, assaults on women, and subsequent actions of his Presidency such as his discussion with Putin remained cloaked in secrecy. Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment. Revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy) No one should have such power. Each Republican President following Nixon was worse as the office accumulated more power. We are in much more danger now. Over the last centuries Europeans nearly destroyed themselves in horrendous wars. But they appear to have learned that a head of state who, on his own whim, can make war, can disappear people, can torture, can ignore habeas corpus, or can otherwise act without regard for law is a clear and present danger. After nearly destroying themselves, they limited their royalty to mostly ceremonial functions, and their people are more the deciders. That's what democracy is about. We should put real policy back in the Congress and make the Presidency ceremonial. We would be much safer. Trump nearly overthrew Constitutional government. He is still trying. It would take a change to the Constitution to fix this. "In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace. " James Madison Presidential sovereignty stems from the widely accepted notion that only a single executive can manage US foreign affairs. At the urging of various private interests, this has led to hundreds of US interventions around the world, often with Congress partially, wholly or willingly kept in the dark. The pattern, which began with President James Polk’s 1846 calculated provocation of war with Mexico, ultimately went public in the 1980s with the exposure of a worldwide crusade to arm, train and direct various Contra forces. It wasn’t “approved” public policy, yet it nevertheless served as the centerpiece of presidential foreign policy during the Reagan years. The Presidency Problem: High Crimes Unbeknownst to the American people, the President of the United States has sweeping emergency powers, which can be activated at the President’s sole discretion. No institutional guardrails exist to prevent the abuse of these powers in the hands of a President with authoritarian instincts and a demagogue’s proven track record – exactly the kind of President the United States has today in Donald J. Trump. Today, Presidents hold more than 120 statutory emergency powers and an additional 50-60 secret powers assumed to be even more draconian. Keep Our Republic The larger political story of the 2020 coronavirus crisis, in other words, may well prove to be a powerful case study in the way that governments controlled by leaders prone to unilateral decision-making, and the top-down information regimes they rely on to perpetuate their rule, are all but guaranteed to create maximum conditions of public health breakdown. How Trump and Xi set the stage for the coronavirus pandemic By Laurie Garrett April 2, 2020 Even in the most dire of emergencies, the president of the United States should not be able to operate free from constitutional checks and balances. The coronavirus crisis should serve as a wake-up call. Presidential emergency action documents have managed to escape democratic oversight for nearly 70 years. Congress should move quickly to remedy that omission and assert its authority to review these documents, before we all learn just how far this administration believes the president’s powers reach. Trump Has Emergency Powers We Aren’t Allowed to Know About (4/10/2020) “Inequality, corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism are an inseparable part of the same system. Around the world demagogues who, once in power, use their positions to loot the state of its resources use divisiveness and abuse as a tool for enriching themselves and loyalists.” Senator Bernie Sanders from his book Where We Go From Here. pg 104 Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American chief executive would become the number one warlord of the earth, his phrase. That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to escalate in Vietnam in February 1965, in cynical disregard of the expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals, I think, with perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and war, the role of the public in decisions about the main lines about public policy in general. And it also suggests the irrelevance of electoral politics to major decisions of national policy. Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect. Noam Chomsky The legal scholar Bruce Ackerman has characterized the last fifty years of American presidential politics as a series of power-grabs by the executive. The biggest involves the politicization of he military, which has been increasingly co-opted into executive rule. Faced with a recalcitrant Congress, presidents turn to soldiers to get things done. Ackerman sees two dangers. One is that a subservient high command might greatly expand the powers of an extremist presidency by doing what it is told. The other is that the president ends up doing what he is told by his generals, who have become an indispensable part of he administration. The commander-in-chief then becomes a figurehead for what is essentially military rule. Are the generals obeying politicians or the politicians obeying generals ? Once the lines get blurred, it is hard to know for sure. How Democracy Ends: David Runciman Are We Sure We Want to Give Trump War Powers? (3/25/2020)Republicans have only won the popular vote in ONE Presidential Election since 1992. From president to president, we do not continue the same foreign policy. Ever since the end of the Cold War we have been on this rollercoaster ride of idiocy with regard to President Here and President There, Democrat versus Republican and so forth. There's no longer any continuity in US policy. I bring you back again to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with regard to Iran. That was negotiated by President Obama. It is now going to be abrogated in May by the President of the United States, who happens to be a Republican. This is idiocy. Lawrence Wilkerson The writing on the wall is that agreements made with the United States are not worth the paper on which they are written, because the current American president can — anytime, without due cause — call them into question without offering a realistic alternative. DW Editorial institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another—from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century—and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward. We should seize the present opportunity to confront deeper institutional pathologies before it is too late. (The Decline and Fall of the American Republic, Bruce Ackerman) "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." --Noam Chomsky “Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have won” the presidency in 2016 if not for Russian subversion, which sowed confusion and hardened negative opinions about her. He astutely tallies the degradation that Trump’s lawless, norm-busting presidency has already inflicted: stuffing the courts, assaulting the Justice Department, demonizing the free press and mainstreaming extremist ideas like mass deportations and the Muslim travel ban — now shamefully validated by a Supreme Court majority. Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment. Revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy) William Barr, Trump’s Sword and Shield, The Attorney General’s mission to maximize executive power and protect the Presidency. David Rohde (New Yorker 1/20/2020)Why I Support Bernie Sanders for President (02/10/2020)The Field Guide to Tyranny, (12/16/2019)The Presidency Is Not Enough (11/4/2019)As income inequality grows, as it almost inevitably does, concentration of power does as well. One of the hallmarks of bad government is a strong man head of state with dictatorial power, another is extreme income inequality. Republicans have been attempting to enhance the power of the Presidency for decades. Trump is the result. Unfettered capitalism favors a strong man head of state, a dictator, not democracy. For a long time Republicans have been making a bad mistake enhancing the power of the Presidency. History shows placing national power in one individual is always a mistake. Europeans made their royalty ceremonial only. Putin, Orban, Bolzanaro, KJU, and Trump are enemies of democracy. Republicans have consolidated power in the President, a very stable genius, who evangelicals call the chosen one. Trump acknowledged no constraints, which is why he was dangerous. However capitalists favor dictators because they are usually for sale. Over the last centuries Europeans nearly destroyed themselves in horrendous wars. But they appear to have learned that a head of state who, on his own whim, can make war, can disappear people, can torture, can ignore habeas corpus, or can otherwise act without regard for law is a clear and present danger. After nearly destroying themselves, they have now limited their royalty to mostly ceremonial functions, and their people are more the deciders. That's what democracy is about. Trump demonstrated clearly how the US presidency can go out of control. He denied Congressional oversight, packed the Courts, appointed acolytes, encouraged violence at rallies, allied with other authoritarians, disdained democracies, tied to overthrow the election by insurrection, etc. Having defeated all checks, the President nearly became a dictator. Would it be a lot to ask that political parties vet candidates for high office, background check, and require them to publicly release their tax returns ? Clearly Republicans didn’t bother with this when they nominated Trump, and now we are all paying a price. We nearly lost our democracy. Trump whiplashed American policy in a manner that is highly damaging. Imposed tariffs, hollowed out the State Department, reversed climate policy, regressive tax cuts that exacerbate inequality, advocated racist policies, expanded the military and nuclear arsenal, defunded the UN, alienated democratic allies, allowed and was assisted by Russian interference in elections, populated the swamp with even uglier creatures, ... The President's wings should be radically clipped. Trump, backed by the GOP, undermined traditional US values. The US cannot be trusted to honor an agreement that it has signed. Chances of a dictatorship or even a military takeover are palpable. However in the US wealth rules. There is a dark part of our government that is heavily funded but secret and unaccountable. It may have grown to be our real ruler. Because it is privy to all communication, whether electronic or postal, it has something on everyone. As Edward Snowden found out, revealing this can be a crime, even if it is the truth. Unfortunately for the US, many Republicans, no longer beware concentration of power. Their administration believes it is above the law. It has effectively shredded the Constitution by imposing secrecy on its important policy decisions, so there is little public debate and Congress has been unable to do proper oversight in the absence of information. Those checks and balances no longer function. While people weren't paying attention, government built an empire. Unfortunately, our primary system performs poorly in selecting candidates. Our national leaders come from mostly from the wealthy. With Trump we had an authoritarian leader undermining all of the supports for democracy who is in blatant violation of the Constitutions emoluments clause, likely won with the assistance of Russians, expanded the military, called for a glorious military parade, appointed a corrupt cabinet working at odds with the public interest, and, as we are in a late stage of capitalism with excessive inequality, we are becoming a Fascist police state. Republicans need to be reminded that the US was founded on principles that "We the People" are the deciders, not the corporations, and not the imperial President. Concentration of power, even private power, is a dagger in the heart of democracy. That's why it is a mistake to vote for Republicans. We need reform. With Trump, we had a President with no prior government experience, who refused to divest from business conflicts of interest, with advisers under a cloud, a cabinet of right-wing plutocrats, who attacked all of the institutions that support democracy, and is still attempting to consolidate his own power. Republicans are an existential threat to the habitability of the planet. We need reform, but it is not on the horizon. Blue states move to block Donald Trump from 2020 ballot (4/26/2019)Bernie Sanders Is Running for President (2/19/2019)What the President Could Do If He Declares a State of Emergency (12/12/2018)It's Not Enough to Impeach Trump — His Entire Presidency Should Be Annulled (8/25/2018)What to Do When a President Believes He’s Above Justice (8/24/2018)Curbing a president's nuclear authority (2/28/2018)How to limit presidential authority to order the use of nuclear weapons (1/23/2018)Bernie Sanders would have won the election if he had got Democratic nomination, says Trump pollster (10/31/2017)Is the Electoral College Doomed? (9/2017)The Past 5 GOP Presidents Have Used Fraud and Treason to Steer Themselves to Electoral Victory (7/28/2017)Is the President of the United States a Russian Puppet? (4/3/2017)10 Ways to Tell if Your President Is a Dictator (11/23/2016)
"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal" Richard Nixon interview with David Frost 1977 interview. ... you know what? Being president is a really, really hard job. A really hard job. And what we've gotten used to is a succession of stupid presidents trying to do a really hard job. Obama was an exception. He's really smart, but he wasn't a great president. So I suppose that counts for something, but even then, being smart doesn't always work. And now we've got Trump. And anyone who has any skill doesn't want to be around him, so who's working for us? Listen, I'm lazy — I know lazy — and he's the laziest person ever. And dumb. There's not a single job he can do. He can't and won't do anything. He wouldn't mow your lawn because not only would he NOT do it, he CAN'T do it." Fran Lebowitz ...the American system of electing its president every four years is designed to produce domestic stability over the long term. But, despite the benign intentions of America's founding fathers, it is a system that has come to generate instability on the international scene. An interesting statistic is that almost every new U.S. president goes to war somewhere - often in his first year in office." Kishore Mahbubani: Beyond the Age of Innocence. pg 106 "This sense that the military serves at the pleasure of the President was candidly expressed by President Nixon during the Watergate aftermath: he said that the executive, legislative, and judiciary are not equal branches, because, unlike the executive neither the legislative nor the judiciary has an army" From Elaine Scarry's book Thermonuclear Monarchy The Constitution already says there are two ways that the president becomes commander in chief. One, when the country is attacked, in which case he can begin to make arrangements to defend us. The other is if there’s a congressional declaration of war. This distinction is also incredibly clear in Scandinavian constitutions, which say that the executive can act to defend the country up to the border but not one step beyond without the authorization of the legislature." Elaine Scarry By constructing a new form of presidential administration, centrists like Clinton and Obama are preparing the way for a tragic future in which extremist presidencies take the center of the bureaucratic stage. Their steady stream of presidential directives will override expert assessments of the facts, or traditional understandings of the law, provided by the agencies. They will call upon the entire executive branch to join the exciting enterprise of executing the president’s mandate from the people. And these instructions will receive an enthusiastic reception—since the bureaucracy will be under the command of presidential appointees, who gained their deputy assistant secretaryships on the basis of their partisan loyalties. Is this what we really want? Bruce Ackerman "I didn't have to get permission from some old goat in the United States Congress to kick [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait" President Bush "In the United States, the dissolution of law in the second half of the twentieth century accelerated in the twenty-first. In the first eight years of the new century, the claim of emergency and the momentum toward unconstrained executive power became increasingly legible, with a presidential office that sanctioned the practice of torture, detention without charge, widespread surveillance of its citizens, and a private mercenary army answerable only to the president. The first in this list - the practice of torture - carried the United States into the deepest region of war crime. The international and national prohibition on torture is not just one law among many but a foundational prohibition underlying the larger framework of laws." Elaine Scarry: Thinking in an Emergency Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, “What are you going to do about the farm problem?” “Well, I don’t know. I used to be a general, and I don’t know anything about farming. But I seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can’t tell you ahead of time what conclusion, but I can give you some of the principles I’ll try to use ... not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them, The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him wh en he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure.--Abraham Lincoln America had been trapped for eight years with the Clintons' marital dysfunction disastrously shaping national events and then trapped for another eight with the Bushes' Oedipal dysfunction disastrously shaping international events. And before that, LBJ and Nixon had acted pretty nutty at times...Obama was supposed to be a soothing change...So it's unnerving now to have yet another president elevating personal quirks into a management style. (Maureen Dowd. New York Times June 20,2010) "The Democrats in Congress have done absolutely nothing to tell the president he is not a king and we do not live in a monarchy. They are allowing him to trash the Constitution because most of them know nothing about the Constitution and are concerned only with making headlines about minor issues and getting themselves reelected." -- Bruce Fein, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being ‘really dumb’ by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them.” And yet there was no shock or fear, at least from Maddow or her viewers. Naked Capitalism (1/14/2017) If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions -- including the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. "That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated." William Blum: Introduction to Rogue State, British Edition Job number one is to check the unremitting concentration and proliferation of power in the presidency and executive branch. Joseph A, Califano Jr. Our Damaged Democracy. Pg 199 The Danger That the U.S. Will Get a Strong Man Head of StateThe US Presidency has been held by family dynasties resulting in huge conflicts of interest. Republican Presidents have gotten worse with each of their elections. A new crop of books makes the case that we are headed for Fascism. Nixon was forced to resign after he engaged in criminal activity. He extended the Vietnam War to improve his own election prospects. Reagan policies started the decline of the middle class. He bargained with Iran to win the Presidency. The Bush family illustrates this
well: Bush grandfather assisted Hitler's rise to power and along with some of our most
important corporate leaders, plotted a fascist coup in America. His son, a principal in the Carlyle group, war profiteers was the head of the CIA, a part of our secret government known to have participated in elections in many countries, assassinations of popular leaders, and there are credible people who think that the CIA was involved in the serial murders of the Kennedy brothers. Why would it surprise anyone that they are deeply involved in determining the outcomes of US elections. W , assisted by his brother Jeb, was selected by a partisan
Supreme Court, to win a rigged election. W continued in the Republican
tradition of rolling back the new deal, installed corporate
supremacists on the Supreme Court,
started two wars on false pretexts, lost the US the moral high ground by engaging in torture,
renditions, revoked US civil liberties by
implementing universal surveillance, and
expanded the national security
state. Even Orwell would cringe. In addition he managed to hide his father's papers from public view. His
administration was a feeding frenzy for corporate contractors. 9/11 was the pretext for an expansion
of presidential power that, like the 'war on terror' itself, the forever war has no
end in sight. The Patriot Act was an assault on civil liberties.
It seems every empire results
in a strong man head of state. The Supreme Court majority are partisan, corporate supremacists
who made corporations people, decided Citizens United to allow cash into the political process.
Corporatism is fascism. Bush, on his own, nullified
long-standing treaties, overturned laws with signing statements, provoked wars in
the Middle East, suppressed information from experts, thumbed his
nose at international law, and
caused ill-will in a large part of the world. His wars resulted in
a power grab, resource robbery, imperialism, religious
crusades, vengeful arrogance, or even
war crimes and have no claim of legitimacy. Another discarded
Constitutional assumption, the avoidance of entangling foreign
activities, is discarded in an attempted resource grab, and a
successful aggrandizement of Presidential power. Still, Bush was not held to account. Although it is not
discussed much, our civil
liberties shrunk dramatically until it is not clear that we
have due process of law any more. Since Bush
packed the Courts, the system may no
longer be self-correcting. Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize winner, documents much of this in his book :"Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency". He quotes Bruce Fein, a conservative lawyer who served as a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, who told Congress in February 2006: "The theory invoked by the president to justify eavesdropping by the NSA in contradiction to FISA would equally justify mail openings, burglaries, torture or internment camps, all in the name of gathering foreign intelligence. Unless rebuked it will lie around like a loaded weapon, ready to be used by any incumbent who claims an urgent need." Partisans cannot be trusted with warrentless surveillance because it is a threat to the Constitution, nor can they be trusted with privatized vote counting. Republicans have brought financial instability on us with
their rush to deregulation. Taxpayer
money, without much fanfare (i.e. lap-dog media),
is bailing out the speculators. Bush's claim of a unitary Presidency is a violation of his oath of office, a direct slap at the Constitution, and should be cause for impeachment and removal from office. A single, strong-man head of State is the mark of an authoritarian government that is a danger to everyone. That is particularly true when there is very little vetting to prevent a sociopath from taking office. To add to the problem, even though our media are controlled by a small number of Corporations (i.e. privatized), the FCC, backed by Bush and over the objections of most of the public, decided to allow further concentration of ownership. In return, Corporate US media, who are war profiteers also, are willing propagandists and cheerleaders for war. Anyone favoring peace is considered subversive. The military-industrial complex that Ike warned about...rules. Like most of our regulatory agencies, the FCC is run for the benefit of the Corporate powerful, not for the people. A government controlled by Corporations is, by definition, Fascist. So our already poor media as it continues concentrating, will get worse. It is evident that US media keeps people distracted, exploited, subservient, misinformed, juvenile, ignorant, and polarized. Misinformation is a fundamental cause of terrorism, and the enabler of authoritarianism. Since people don't access information to make an informed decision, there can be no democracy. Elections are untrustworthy, candidates are self selected, and the result has not been good. (i.e. Bush) and even worse Trump. No US institutions, not the ruling billionaires, not the plutocrats, not the evangelicals, certainly not the two official parties, favor real democracy. Yale Law School Dean Koh's CommentaryAbout Presidential ElectionsOne of the reasons for dysfunctional U.S. Presidential
elections is that discussion of issues is usually hijacked by private media: a candidate's personal
problem unrelated to any public purpose: Willie Horton, Swiftboats,
Benghazi, etc. Discussion of the candidate's issues, leaves real ones
back-burnered and debate that is not constructive.
Republicans cheat at elections.
Then, in debates, they could attempt to justify their departure from the norm. This would help to identify the best candidates. There should be no doubt that candidate vetting is inadequate now. Results should be placed in a free and open-source, public
database, so that it would be possible to select, as a group, scientists,
economists, Republicans, Democrats, minorities, and others for
comparison of opinion. We could reconcile differences between
informed opinion and public preferences, and thereby identify areas
that media should work on. The database should be accessible to
the public for further analysis so that independent scoring could be
done from different viewpoints and by various techniques. To keep the database public, it would need to be done either by a non-profit, or by some public entity. For a country that can engage in universal surveillance of
communications without telling anyone, this could be done at a small
price. Meanwhile, it could be possible to summarize likely results
from existing polling, candidates statements, and other data. The really crucial question: is ANY reform of our bankrupt system possible ? Our Disrupted Republic (7/4/2017)No,
Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along (11/23/2016)
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