Friday, December 28, 2007
JB
This
article by Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, which Marty
discussed last week, describes the positions of many of the major presidential candidates. For convenience, here are answers by Democrats
Joseph Biden,
Hillary Clinton,
Chris Dodd,
John Edwards,
Barack Obama, and
Bill Richardson, and Republicans
Rudy Giuliani,
Mike Huckabee,
John McCain,
Ron Paul,
Mitt Romney, and
Fred Thompson.
It is worth noting that while the Democrats answered almost all of the questions posed to them, Giuliani, Huckabee and Thompson, three of the front runners, essentially avoided answering any of them (Giuliani gave a general response to the first question and would not go into specifics). Mitt Romney essentially gave answers out of Dick Cheney's playbook. My guess is that Giuliani (almost certainly, given his previous public statements) and likely also Huckabee and Thompson would probably support a strong executive. McCain's answers seem more moderate in some respects (e.g., torture) but not in others. Ron Paul, a libertarian, wants a far less powerful executive.
What can we infer from these responses? First, the Democrats think that attacking Bush's assertions of executive power is good politics; conversely, Republicans like Giuliani and Romney probably think that pushing for strong executive powers is appealing to parts of the Republican base.
<...>
Third, we must distinguish the party system, its politicians, and its political operatives from particular liberal or conservative intellectuals and legal theorists associated with the two major political parties. Party operatives, pundits, and politicians are used to changing their arguments about structural matters (Presidential power, federalism, judicial restraint) on a dime, with few worries about consistency over time. So it is possible that a Republican Congressman in 1999 could attack Bill Clinton for bombing Kosovo, flip to become an ardent defender of George Bush's powers in 2004 and then flip back to becoming a critic of Presidential power in 2009 under a Hillary Clinton Presidency. By contrast, legal theorists and intellectuals will have much greater difficulty doing this sort of flip because their professional reputations tend to be based on their intellectual consistency over time, although one expects there will be a fair number who will make the attempt.
A Clinton or Obama or Edwards Presidency will probably produce a number of liberal intellectuals who were quite happy making arguments for a strong executive during the Clinton years and would be happy doing so again. It is also worth remembering that Bill Clinton was no great friend of civil liberties during his two terms in office-- although George W. Bush has made him look good by comparison on that score-- and that Clinton engaged in one of the most significant acts of Presidential unilateralism in recent memory-- engaging in airstrikes on Kosovo in a war against Yugoslavia without Congressional authorization. All of these decisions were supported by lawyers in the Clinton Justice Department, which suggests that there are plenty of liberal Democrats willing and able to argue for fairly robust Presidential power if the occasion calls for it.
Readers of this blog presumably are aware that, all other things being equal, I would rather have a Democrat in the White House in 2009; I think the last seven years have been dreadful for the country and it is time to clean house. But precisely for that reason, I think it important to keep a new Democratic Administration honest when it comes to excesses of power and violations of civil liberties, because, for the reasons described above, it has every incentive to make only symbolic reforms.
Perhaps I am being too pessimistic: It is possible that the last seven years have really taught the Democrats something about the dangers of Executive authority. But it is also possible that once in office, they will forget many of those lessons.
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