Lithwick asks the right question

December 22, 2005

The controversy surrounding Bush’s warrantless-spying program isn’t quite a week old, but plenty of ink has been spilled reviewing the scandal from every angle. To date, my very favorite analysis comes by way of Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who asked the right questions in a devastating way.

Lithwick details the way in which the nation thought it was bargaining in good faith with the president since 9/11, who “was nodding and smiling and taking what he wanted in secret.” It’s quite a list of betrayal, culminating in Bush’s belief that he has “limitless powers to break the law.”

The biggest problem is not necessarily Bush’s desire to circumvent the law, Lithwick argues, but how he chose to do it.

The Bush administration is forever quick to point out the flaws in all these bargains we have struck. The Patriot Act didn’t go far enough, so the administration pushed for Patriot II. The Geneva Conventions afforded prisoners too many rights, so those rights were suspended. The statutory definition of torture precluded intelligence-gathering, so new definitions were invented. FISA was too cumbersome in a crisis, so it doesn’t bind the president. Perhaps it’s naive to think we had these negotiations in public because this delicate allocation of rights and powers is fundamental to a democracy. It’s not shocking that the Bush administration sought to expand its powers. It’s shocking that the president unfailingly refuses to ask.

What’s the explanation? The Slate piece offers two possibilities — that Bush sees the courts, the Congress, and the American people as inconvenient obstacles that forced him to operate outside legal limits, or that Bush sees the laws as “unfixable,” so he won’t bother to try and follow them.

Lithwick concludes that “the first possibility is grandiose and depressing. The latter is absolutely breathtaking.” Truer words were never spoken.

I think it goes to the basic conservative disrespect for government. But I thought even they respected the “true” functions of the federal government which have been defined as national defense, policing and the courts. I guess they don’t even have any respect for those.

  • Anyone checked on the Rev. Moon lately?

    The way the President is acting, it makes me think he’s being driven by ideas entirely outside US law, and Rev. Moon’s influence seems likely to me.

  • Wow. People are actually suprised by this? Well that explains how he got elected and re-elected. Molly Ivins has been writing about the real George W. for years – this is just expected behaviour for Bush and his gang.

  • I may be just restating what’s already there, but Cheney’s constant complaining about the diminished power of the Executive branch and his quite overt demands that the power be reaccrued and locked in would seem to be a clue. There is first and foremost, a deep seated sense of entitlement to unbridled power and then there is the desire to create precedent by using that power and setting new benchmarks based on what’s been gotten away with to date.

    It’s so amazing how perfect the Shrub has been for this whole task. His life has been entitlement personified and so he has no concept of the word “NO” and he’s perfectly inclined to question the concept that any priviledge should be greater than his. If Cheney tells him something is rightfully his, then no further investigation is required. What’s to question? Shruby goes out with a straight face and a perplexed tone in his voice and wonders what the fuss is about. He’s been told the power is his. So it’s his. Can’t the discussion just move on to something else? His oblivious confidence probably marvels even Dick and Karl. How many blank slates come preloaded with so much incurious arrogance?

    It makes me wonder, over the course of history, how many other leaders/despots/figureheads have achieved the great power of Shrubish without any justification for holding that power residing in the supreme ruler himself.

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