Here’s the thing. It looks as if we and the Iraqis are in for different versions of the same fate — different because the Iraqis, of course, will be starting from something like the rubble level, whereas we still have a long, long way to fall. But both societies will be ruled by the same boy emperor and his remarkably small coterie of advisers, think-tankers, media spinners, and corporate cronies (as in the most literal sort of crony capitalism). In each, the military will be predominant; in our case, the military and allied budgets (for homeland security and the like) will suck up whatever money there is to spend. Each will be strip-mined — the somewhat more polite phrase for it is “privatized” — their “patrimonies” preserved, but only for those few who matter, their services and what’s left of their safety nets dismantled, and their peoples thrown on an increasingly Darwinian looking “free market” (only “free,” in fact, at the bottom, not the top).
This seems to be the nature of the “freedom” that the Bush administration has so proudly had in mind whether in speaking of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” or the glories of preserving “American Freedom.” (On the subject of the narrowness of our present definitions of freedom, I recommend a piece in this Sunday’s New York Times by Eric Foner, Not All Freedom Is Made in America). In each area, rule will be maintained by the threat of further chaos and terrorism — or actual chaos and terrorism — and by the possibility at any needed moment of another preventive war.
Will this work, in the short run at least? I have no idea. But below are three recent pieces by three intelligent men — Roger Morris, Harold Meyerson, and Paul Krugman — writing on the extremity of our imperial presidency at home and abroad, and they fear it might. Their descriptions of our prospects are certainly chilling, but we had all better attend. Tom
From Republic to Empire
By Roger Morris
The Toronto Globe and Mail
April 14, 2003Whatever his triumph in Iraq, George W. Bush already enjoyed a victory of historic proportions in the United States. By unique dominance of Congress and the rest of government, and to the approval of the American media and an impressive majority in the polls, Mr. Bush had acquired power beyond the grasp of any predecessor. Before U.S. forces ever roared through Baghdad, their Commander-in-Chief was America’s most imperial president.
The spectre of an emperor in the White House is familiar to an American system that lurches between the wider powers of the modern president and the long-sacred constitutional restraints placed on executive supremacy. In his noted 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned of “presidential power so spacious and peremptory as to imply a radical transformation of the traditional polity.”
Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, is the author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America
.
To read more Morris click here
Whatever his triumph in Iraq, George W. Bush already enjoyed a victory of historic proportions in the United States. By unique dominance of Congress and the rest of government, and to the approval of the American media and an impressive majority in the polls, Mr. Bush had acquired power beyond the grasp of any predecessor. Before U.S. forces ever roared through Baghdad, their Commander-in-Chief was America’s most imperial president.
The spectre of an emperor in the White House is familiar to an American system that lurches between the wider powers of the modern president and the long-sacred constitutional restraints placed on executive supremacy. In his noted 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned of “presidential power so spacious and peremptory as to imply a radical transformation of the traditional polity.”
Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, is the author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America
.
The Most Dangerous President Ever
How and why George W. Bush undermines American security
By Harold Meyerson
The American Prospect Magazine
May 1, 2003I miss Ronald Reagan.
I know, I know: Reagan was our first president to proclaim government the problem, to cut taxes massively on the rich, to deliberately create a deficit so immense that the government’s impoverishment did indeed become a problem. He waged a war of dubious merit and clear illegality in Central America; he pandered to the most bigoted elements in American society.
The United States would be a far better place had he not been elected.
But politics deals in comparatives, not absolutes. And when I compare Reagan with his ideological heir currently occupying the White House, I’ll take the Gipper, hands down. George W. Bush is much the meaner president (and man). He is far more factional than Reagan was. And he is incomparably more dangerous than Reagan or any other president in this nation’s history.
To read more meyerson click here
Behind Our Backs
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
April 15, 2003As the war began, members of the House of Representatives gave speech after speech praising our soldiers, and passed a resolution declaring their support for the troops. Then they voted to slash veterans’ benefits.
Some of us have long predicted that the drive to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy would lead to a fiscal dance of the seven veils. One at a time, the pretenses would be dropped — the pretense that big tax cuts wouldn’t preclude new programs like prescription-drug insurance, the pretense that the budget would remain in surplus, the pretense that spending could be cut painlessly by eliminating waste and fraud, the pretense that spending cuts wouldn’t hurt the middle class.
There are still several veils to remove before the true face of “compassionate conservatism” is revealed, but we’re getting there.