At a candidate forum for trial lawyers in Chicago on Sunday, Hillary Clinton
proclaimed that the Bush administration is "the most radical presidency we
have ever had."
This is, quite simply, absurd. But such boob-bait for the Bush bashers is
common today in Democratic circles, just as similar right-wing rhetoric
about Bill Clinton was par for the course a decade ago. The culture war, it
seems, has distorted how we view politics more than we realized. Trust in
government is at historic lows, but faith in one's own "team" remains
remarkably durable. (President Bush's job-approval rating among Republicans
is 80 percent, according to the polling company Rasmussen.)
Only someone suffering partisan amnesia could believe Bush has been a more
"radical" president than, say, Woodrow Wilson, under whom antiwar dissidents
were thrown in jail and beaten in the streets. Wilson was the first
president to openly deride the Constitution, mocking the "Fourth of July
sentiments" of those who cared too much about its meaning. Where Bush
reaches out to American Muslims and illegal immigrants, Wilson demonized
immigrants and "hyphenated Americans" with a venom unimaginable today. "I
cannot say too often - any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a
dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic," Wilson
said in 1919.
For much of the 20th century, American conservatives saw themselves as
opponents of the imperial presidency, as embodied by Wilson and, later, FDR.
In 1964, for instance, Barry Goldwater cast himself as the candidate against
strongman government (and, revealingly, lost badly). But conservatives began
to change their tune when the New Deal/Great Society consensus started to
unravel and they discovered that the presidency could be theirs if they made
peace with it.
In fact, some conservatives viewed Richard Nixon's downfall as the product
of an unfair double standard because Democratic presidents had gotten away
with metaphorical murder for years. Liberals who traditionally had seen
nothing wrong with strongman presidencies (liberal-hero journalist Walter
Lippmann urged FDR to assume "dictatorial powers") changed their tune under
Nixon as well.
"Those who tried to warn us back at the beginning of the New Deal of the
dangers of one-man rule that lay ahead on the path we were taking toward
strong, centralized government may not have been so wrong," then-California
Sen. Alan Cranston conceded at the height of Watergate in 1973.
Stephen F. Hayes' riveting new biography, "Cheney," recounts a discussion in
1980 at the American Enterprise Institute between two new congressmen, Dick
Cheney and Newt Gingrich.
"Congress has been a big part of the problem," declared Cheney, a veteran of
the Ford administration. "A fundamental problem has been the extent to which
we have restrained presidential authority over the last several years. ...
We have been concerned with the so-called myth of the imperial presidency.
"We must restore some balance" between Congress and the White House, Cheney
insisted.
Gingrich vehemently disagreed. "What we need is a stronger Congress, not a
weaker Congress," he shot back. "The greatest danger of the Reagan
administration is that conservatives will decide they can trust imperial
presidents as long as they are right-wing when they are imperial."
I'd be curious to know if Gingrich still feels that way, now that his hungry
eyes seem focused on the presidency. But the Newt of 1980 was definitely on
to something. Today, most people object to the imperial presidency only when
the other party controls the White House.
At Sunday's conference, for example, Sen. Barack Obama proclaimed that
"people are tired of Scooter Libby justice." Clinton's pardons for loyalist
Susan McDougal, billionaire tax evader Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists
apparently slipped down the memory hole.
For eight years, the right screamed bloody murder about Clinton's
overreaching. He minted new executive privileges, "accidentally" rummaged
through the FBI files of political opponents and sought electronic
wiretapping powers - during peacetime - that today are denounced. Some on
the right feared we were on a slippery slope to tyranny. Liberals often
chortled about such right-wing paranoia.
Today, the dynamic is reversed. Liberals fret over creeping fascism while
conservatives give Bush the benefit of the doubt. Both sides are open to
charges of hypocrisy, and neither is immune to partisan amnesia. The only
consistent crowd are the Libertarians, who distrust all government power.
I wish I had some solution to offer, but my guess is there is none. Indeed,
you can be sure that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, someone will
denounce her as "the most radical president we've ever had" - whether it's
true or not.