I Must Be High. George Will Wrote This?

[Darryl G. Thomas]

No Checks, Many Imbalances

By George F. Will
Thursday, February 16, 2006; A27

The next time a president asks Congress to pass something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 -- the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) -- the resulting legislation might be longer than Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." Congress, remembering what is happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional understandings that it does not intend the act to repeal or supersede.

But, then, perhaps no future president will ask for such congressional involvement in the gravest decision government makes -- going to war. Why would future presidents ask, if the present administration successfully asserts its current doctrine? It is that whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be. This monarchical doctrine emerges from the administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was written to regulate wartime surveillance.

Administration supporters incoherently argue that the AUMF also authorized the NSA surveillance -- and that if the administration had asked, Congress would have refused to authorize it. The first assertion is implausible: None of the 518 legislators who voted for the AUMF has said that he or she then thought it contained the permissiveness the administration discerns in it. Did the administration, until the program became known two months ago? Or was the AUMF then seized upon as a justification? Equally implausible is the idea that in the months after Sept. 11, Congress would have refused to revise the 1978 law in ways that would authorize, with some supervision, NSA surveillance that, even in today's more contentious climate, most serious people consider conducive to national security.

Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes.

The administration's argument about the legality of the NSA program also has been discordant with its argument about the urgency of extending the USA Patriot Act. Many provisions of that act are superfluous if a president's wartime powers are as far-reaching as today's president says they are.

And if, as some administration supporters say, amending the 1978 act to meet today's exigencies would have given America's enemies dangerous information about our capabilities and intentions, surely FISA and the Patriot Act were both informative. Intelligence professionals reportedly say that the behavior of suspected terrorists has changed since Dec. 15, when the New York Times revealed the NSA surveillance. But surely America's enemies have assumed that our technologically sophisticated nation has been trying, in ways known and unknown, to eavesdrop on them.

Besides, terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration. This faux toughness is folly, given that the Supreme Court, when rejecting President Harry S Truman's claim that his inherent powers as commander in chief allowed him to seize steel mills during the Korean War, held that presidential authority is weakest when it clashes with Congress.

Immediately after Sept. 11, the president rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication. Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls -- the kind the Sept. 11 terrorists made.

But 53 months later, Congress should make all necessary actions lawful by authorizing the president to take those actions, with suitable supervision. It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.



Maybe Will's afraid Hillary will win in '08?

[Scott Dolan]

Will has spoken out against this admin before this. Why do you find it so surprising?

[Darryl G. Thomas]

My impression was that Will was in locked-step with the Bush crew. So my knee-jerk reaction has been to skip his op-ed pieces. Could be a failure on my part. I'm really angry at the conservative movement, have been for years, so maybe I've become intellectually lazy and tend to read the cats I agree with politically.

Will wrote something that really pissed me off a while back concerning the Palestinian elections. I thought he took a gratuitous shot at Jimmy Carter. Carter's fallings as a president have been well documented. However, Will decided to denegrate Carter's post-pres work saying that he's been even a worse ex-president than he was a president.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by DGT

maybe I've become intellectually lazy and tend to read the cats I agree with politically.

Yeah, I have gone exactly the opposite route over the last couple of years. I tend to read more from people who I do not agree with politically. I want a bigger picture. Only reading shit from folks I agree with really limits the ability to give a greater amount of consideration to a particular situation or event. And because of that my own political thinking has become more flexible.

I thought he took a gratuitous shot at Jimmy Carter.

Unfortunately, that's not a hard thing to do. I've got no problem with my boy, JC, but he does tend to leave himself wide open for attacks.

Oh, and fuck Hitlary in '08. Feingold is the man!!

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Yeah, I have gone exactly the opposite route over the last couple of years. I tend to read more from people who I do not agree with politically.

Really? You've certainly kept your proclivities to yourself. You ought to quote one of these wack-a-doodle sources once in a while.

[Tanager]

I've always had a soft spot for Will - I think he's intelligent and thoughtful (they're not always the same), and he's always worth reading. I do, however, agree with Darryl re: Carter - he's been as fine an ex-President as we could have hoped to have.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Really? You've certainly kept your proclivities to yourself. You ought to quote one of these wack-a-doodle sources once in a while.

Why? I never quote an op-ed source.

But I did just get done with Friedmans latest book, and I'm getting ready to read Carters. Not exactly right wing commentators.

[JamesH]

I'm glad to hear that people like Will are making strong criticisms of the Bush Admin. It shows that even the neo cons, neo con still believes in the fundamentals of democracy. Though I'm a progressive, I'll take true conservatism over this religious right ruled, keystone cops regime anytime.

This isn't about the Dems vs the GOP anymore. That was small potatoes. This is about our basic American democracy that's currently at stake.

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Yeah, I have gone exactly the opposite route over the last couple of years. I tend to read more from people who I do not agree with politically. I want a bigger picture.

Unless you have your hands over you ears and a blindfold on I'm not sure a conservative has a choice. IMHO this is the worst run and most corrupt administration in modern history. I'm just glad the mid-term elections are not for another 9 and 1/2 months. That will give us time for another dozen or so new scandals.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Tanager

Carter - he's been as fine an ex-President as we could have hoped to have.

I'm going to second that opinion, because I agree that God blessed the United States profoundly the day Jimmy Carter became a former president.

Will has always been the conservative's conservative. He's right that the institution of the presidency and that of Congress are butting heads. The butting of such heads is a check and a balance, if both parties act energetically enough. I agree with him that Congress should fully authorize the NSA to do what it has been doing and in that authorization make the case for the need for that authorization. However, future executives will probably understand their powers to be precisely what Bush understands them to be.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by JamesH

Unless you have your hands over you ears and a blindfold on I'm not sure a conservative has a choice.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

[JamesH]

Scott - I simply mean that the scandals of the current administration are making all but the most hard headed Republicans listen to the arguments and opinions of non-conservatives whose voices have been given power by the bumbling mistakes of the Bush administration.


Not unlike how Dems have to listen to criticisms of Carter 30 years after his Presidency suffered because of economic inflation he had no control over.

In fact Carter has been a primary fuel for the success of the GOP the past 25 years. I can only hope that Bush will do the same for Democrats. Though I won't hold my breath.

[Scott Dolan]

Maybe. That wasn't my motivation though. I simply saw the foolishness of only getting one side of the story.

Plus, as I've become a C-SPAN nerd I've quickly gained an appreciation for what goes on on Capitol Hill. And most of the people who impress me most in the Senate are Democrats.

[Gary Sisco]

There's a lot of arm-twisting lockstep in Congress, D., but so far as conservatives in general go, there are several very serious political splits over this admin and Congress, too. For one thing, the admin isn't conservative at all by any historical definition (which are nearly always meaningless in the US which exists as if history doesn't, even though it's the past that creates the present and future as well, often) but rather, radical right and extremely so. They're not trying to "conserve" anything but their own capital. What they're really doing is carrying out a very radical social and political revolution which has taken them well outside of US conservatism's major tenets, principles, and features.

There are still conservatives, and many of them, who are fiscal conservatives, limited-as-possible government types, and definitely still many who embrace the Constitution in principle and who don't view it as a set of "technicalities" to be ignored when inconvenient. They were *intended* to place restrictions and limits on the government's policing and warmaking powers, and especially on executive power. There are still conservatives who remember and understand that Congress is the only branch of government elected by the people and the only branch therefore that can speak as actual representatives of the people's views. There are still conservatives who support free trade and oppose subsidies (unlike the admin on both counts). And there are plenty who don't and haven't supported the war, as well. Thinking of the opposition to the war in "left/right" terms is a historical leftover that has a lot more to do with Vietnam days and the Cold War than anything happening today (when there isn't a left in any case). There are plenty of conservatives who are opposed to the war and are on record for it, and also on record so far as the rest of those traditionally conservative positions go.

I happen to share nearly all of those positions, myself.

So do many, many Americans. But if people think they'll just jump on the dimocrit bandwagon whoever they put up, they're entirely wrong. And especially wrong if they think putting up "Hillary" will defeat them next time out. It won't. The people who think so are dealing in fantasy and clearly don't spend any time talking politics with people who don't think like they do. "Hillary" (what is she, Elvis or something, she has only a first name?) is very much loathed by a huge lot of Americans and there's a huge lot as well that don't view the Clinton years with nostalgia. (I'm one. I couldn't stand the guy to begin with and his absolutely savage policies toward handicapped people didn't help me loathe him any less). And in any case, "Hillary" in fact is on record as supporting many of the things most unpopular about the Bushists.

Trouble is today, too much, that technology has made it entirely possible for people to ignore political outlets they don't agree with. It renders them therefore ignorant of what other people who aren't like them are thinking and saying. Myself, I go the other way. I don't read or listen to things I agree with because I already know what I think, having a political philosophy and theory of history, and I don't find it anymore reinforcing to read others saying the same things I already think, as many apparently do, given the lecturing-to-the-converted aspect of nearly all advocacy journalism and political commentary.

We'd all be better off if we spent more time understanding our opponents' way of thinking and acting. Instead, we seem to act as if understanding one's opponent's positions and logic is the same thing as supporting them. It isn't. Never was.

But the simple fact is that you can't effectively oppose anything you don't understand. As the US is finding, for all of its firepower and bloodshed, in its wer'n'turror.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Gary

Trouble is today, too much, that technology has made it entirely possible for people to ignore political outlets they don't agree with.

How has technology added to this?

We'd all be better off if we spent more time understanding our opponents' way of thinking and acting.

I agree 100%, as I have already stated above.

Instead, we seem to act as if understanding one's opponent's positions and logic is the same thing as supporting them.

I don't necessarily agree with this, but I can really only speak for myself in this regard. I think it has more to do with the "fact" that what the other side says and believes are all lies. I mean, just turn on Hannity one day and listen to the people who call in to the show. It becomes painfully apparent that they are sadly under informed and totally unwilling to listen to the "lies" from the other side.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Scott,

I hate to speak for Gary but when he talks about technology he's talking about the Internet.

When I was a kid there were only 3 national TV networks and the "educational channel" (now called PBS). Philly had three newspapers. The sources of news and political commentary was limited.

Now you've got cable, the internet, 24-hour news channels. News has become balkanized. Now if you're a right-winger you can watch Fox News and totally ignore CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS. Or you can log on and just read your favorite bloggers.

If you're a liberal or progressive you can just read The Nation and ignore National Review.

Or if you're Bush you can ignore all the media and have like-minded individuals read it for you (sorry for the partisan shot but I had to go there).

Gary makes an excellent point. We have to get pass the concept of teams. We treat politics like sports. For liberals the Democrats is our team, for conservatives their's is the Republicans.

There's nothing conservative about Bush. Fiscal responsibility? Shying away from foreign engagements? He talks a good social conservative game, but that's about it. And since when has unfettered capitalism come to mean conservatism? And even there Bush has been very inconsistent. A true free market dude would get rid of all subsidies, tariffs, etc.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by DGT

There's nothing conservative about Bush.

I have said this SEVERAL times over the years and have been laughed at heartily.

Glad to see you say the same thing.

[frank m]

Blamed for so much he had no control over. The Oil "strike" . Crippling inflation, the Iran embassy takeover. And now he's beiing blamed for the rise of the Republican party.

Anybody remember LBJ and his civil rights acts. He knew, and said as much, that it would put the "Solid (Democratic) South" into the Republican camp for years to come, and so it has been.

[Scott Dolan]

Conversely fixed:

Originally Posted by frankM

Blamed for so much he had no control over. Hurricane Katrina, economy in the dumper, the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And now he's beiing blamed for................

See how easily that works, frank?

[Gary Sisco]

Darryl summed up my thoughts on technology in this context, very well. For all the talk of media barrage, there've never been as many easily accessible ideological filters as there are today. It's entirely possible to set it up now so that one doesn't hear any views that one doesn't share. That hasn't always been the case. Plus, we also have, on the plus side, ease of access to the international press, which used to be something only people in major metro areas could do. Not so anymore. I read mainly the international press now. The US's partisanship is too much for me, esp since I don't have any "leaning" even toward either camp (as if there can only be two, but that's the dominant view), and in any case, even such noted "liberal" pages as the NYT has voluntarily gone along with the Bushists on issues of "national security" (historically, since WW2, the word used to mask unconstitutionality more than anything else and still today).

As for my remarks about understanding one's opponents, they aren't meant to be pollyannish. I'm saying that if you don't understand the way one's opponents' minds work, you can't defeat them. You also must respect those whose minds command respect, agree or not, or you're a fool. Johnson might have thought of Vietnam for instance as a "piss-ant country" but anyone who fought them will tell you straight up that that "piss-ant country" had the finest light infantry forces on the planet at the time, and you learned how to respect them and understand their ways or you died. And of course the leadership of the US never really did understand or respect, and hence, got their asses handed to them, indirectly, while the grunts got it handed to them literally (as always).

Here's an example: Try playing chess with someone sometime while refusing to understand your opponents' logic and strategy, tactics, etc. Just focus on your own. See how often you win.

It's not a matter of agreeing or whether anything is true or false. For one thing, the things people choose to lie about can tell you an awful lot about the ways in which thier minds work -- easily as much as if what they are saying is true.

These are things that have to be understood and practiced. For example, just deciding that Islam is madness and chaos and leaving it at that virtually guarantees that those madmen will fuck you and your plans up, and do it well, as is happening daily in Iraq, never mind Afghanistan (the forgotten war).

For myself, nothing bores me more than reading a hectoring, preaching to the choir article, *esp* if I agree with it. But apparently there are many who need to have their own views confirmed by what they read or listen to. I'm not one of them.

[JamesH]

Originally Posted by frank m

Blamed for so much he had no control over. The Oil "strike" . Crippling inflation, the Iran embassy takeover. And now he's beiing blamed for the rise of the Republican party.

Anybody remember LBJ and his civil rights acts. He knew, and said as much, that it would put the "Solid (Democratic) South" into the Republican camp for years to come, and so it has been.

I don't think Carter is directly to blame for the rise of the GOP. I do think they used his failed Presidency as a basis for making "liberal" a bad word. The Republicans have the greatest spin doctors on the planet and figured out a long time ago that if you tell an American something a significant number of times it will become the unquestioned truth.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Gary

As for my remarks about understanding one's opponents, they aren't meant to be pollyannish. I'm saying that if you don't understand the way one's opponents' minds work, you can't defeat them.

Not exactly Sun Tzu, but I'll accept it!

[Gary Sisco]

No, but Sun Tzu would agree, I'll say that much.

[Gary Sisco]

The rise of the GOP had next to nothing to do with the dems or any of their shining lights.

It happened because conservatives and esp the religious right spent a good 25 years organizing itself at the grassroots and doing the hard and often boring work required to make one's movement a real political force in the society. No amount of checks sent to a party committee or candidate can make up for not having done that essential political work, which the liberals did not do and won't, still. They'd rather sit and around and piss and moan about the power of the media and this or that other fetish of their own creation.

The dims created their own disaster through inaction and an unbelievably arrogant way of taking votes for granted. "Hey, who you gonna vote for, the Repubicans?" Well, the "Reagan democrats," for one example, answered that question for them 25 years ago and they still haven't understood what happened or why and won't because they're too busy stewing and following the wagging tail of the Repubs, as if anyone needs a Repub Lite Party.

Imitation and media cannot do what 25 years of grassroots organizing can do, and that's all there is to it.

Hell, it took them that long just to acknowledge the incredible power of talk radio and start up one of their own instead of just mocking the conservative ones that were busy kicking their asses and creating a fired-up base. Duh. The way they've behaved, they don't really deserve people's support -- and lots of times they don't get it, either.

But the blame rests directly on their own shoulders. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, preventing anyone from doing the essential hard work of grassroots organizing. Nothing at all. So I don't shed any tears or lose any sleep or tolerate the pissing and moaning either. They created their own irrelevance.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

No, but Sun Tzu would agree

And so do I. 100%

[Gary Sisco]

One thing I was thinking is that the dims instead of moaning about an imaginary conservative monolith should behave like an opposition party and start doing some political work to divide and conquer by drawing off the dissatisfied who are also in opposition but not dims. But they won't. As they showed with Hackertt, they'd rather lose.

Truth is, they and often their supporters spend too much time with people who think like they think and so have lost track not just of how the various kinds of conservatives but of how other people think who are neither conservatives nor liberals, repubs nor dims -- ie, the third of the voting population that has and wants no party affiliation and which makes or breaks elections.

But they won't. The proof can be found in their even talking about putting up "Hillary."

It also shows how little the Constitution matter to them as well. Like the repubs they like the parts they like and would ignore the rest, as if it's a menu in a cafeteria.

[Scott Dolan]

Political stereotyping is so much easier, Gary.

Why should they be bothered with doing their homework? Conservatives are stupid fucking hicks who simply don't know any better. Liberals are sophisticated yet downtrodden.

What more is there to know?



And they wonder why they continually lose.

[Gary Sisco]

They choose to lose, clearly.

Political victory for an opposition comes from doing the work required to create a base that isn't covered by the party being opposed, for obvious reasons. Nitwits.

The base covered by the cons is already occupied and will remain so.

It's not only the libs that act brainless, though. The NRA could easily have 12 million members instead of four million, if they didn't insist on insulting every firearms owner who doesn't have his nose stuck up Bush and Cheney's asses six inches, but no .... And for the same reasons the dims would rather lose by choice than back a Hackertt who dares take an entirely traditional and constitutional stand on the 2nd Amendment. Neither grouping bothers to spend any serious time with other people who think differently than they do. The official lib and con shops are both closed and closed tight.

Which is why at least a third of the voting population considers itself independent of both camps, and who can blame them.

This enrapturement with "Hillary" is proof on the dim side all by itself. Even talking about putting her up reveals an extraordinary disconnect with a whole huge portion of the American people, who simply can't stand the woman and don't miss her alleged husband's reign, either. Recently, I had a friend visiting (traditional 60s lib through and through, black, Colgate, Harvard Law, mid-50s aged, former DNC) who raved for at least half an hour without prompting from me about how stupid it would be to even talk about nominating her but he expects they will anyway. And he also agreed with me as to why. He considers them clueless about the American people, and they are.

[Scott Dolan]

On one hand I'd agree with you, but on the other, I'm not so sure. I think they may be badly overestimating Hitlarys draw, but then again with the fracture line between the two parties being as large as it is, it will likely, once again, come down to an opposition vote. Just like with Kerry.

The other big potential problem I see with her is she might peak too soon, a la Howard Dean. Although, I don't think my favorite hillbilly, Carville, will allow that to happen.

They'll definitely nominate her, the interesting part will be who gets the Pubby nom. It will take a fairly strong candidate to defeat that cult of personality.

[groover]

Edwards is and would have been a better choice to lead the Dem ticket, in '04 and '08.

[Monte Smith]

The Dems need to reach into their bullpen for someone of stature. Edwards has no stature. He's a one time senator who has the distinction of losing a national election. That's not stature. But he does have an effective message (Two Americas) and a fine head of hair. Plus his daddy werked in uh mill.

The Dems need to reach into their bullpen for someone of stature, I say. Also someone who is not poison. Hillary is poison, Al Gore is poison, John Kerry got as many votes as he is going to get in 2008. That means he's poison.

So who is going to be the Dem at the top of a ticket where the second name on the ticket is Richardson or Obama (this is if the Dems are smart). I don't think the Dems can run a second tier guy like a Joe Biden or a Mark Warner and win. I think they need stature. I think they need Ben Bradley.