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New Conscience of a Conservative
In an article to appear in the Spet. 9th issue of the [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/magazine/09rosen.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1188903666-+u+SSMH/ZHdnW3uuMtYipA, |NY Times Magazine] GW law professor Jeffery Rosen interviews Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith about his book "The Terror Presidency". I quoted a lot, but it is a long article, and there was more I wanted to quote.

After reading the article I had several immediate thoughts, mainly that I am glad the administration didn't listen to him. Because, if they had a lot of their over reaching might have been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. I am even more convinced that President Bush is not aware of the extent to which his understanding of how his administration works is limited by the Vice President's control of the Executive Branch's bureaucracy. Cheney, I don't think could achieved his control without Addington. I am going to be digesting this article for quite a while.

While I don't agree with Goldsmith's view of the powers of the Executive Branch, I do appreciate his respect for the rule of law, which places him in the minority of people who have worked for President Bush.

In Goldsmith\ufffds view, the Bush administration went about answering these questions in the wrong way. Instead of reaching out to Congress and the courts for support, which would have strengthened its legal hand, the administration asserted what Goldsmith considers an unnecessarily broad, \ufffdgo-it-alone\ufffd view of executive power. As Goldsmith sees it, this strategy has backfired. \ufffdThey embraced this vision,\ufffd he says, \ufffdbecause they wanted to leave the presidency stronger than when they assumed office, but the approach they took achieved exactly the opposite effect. The central irony is that people whose explicit goal was to expand presidential power have diminished it.\ufffd

...

In his book, Goldsmith describes Addington as the \ufffdbiggest presence in the room \ufffd a large man with large glasses and an imposing salt-and-pepper beard\ufffd who was \ufffdknown throughout the bureaucracy as the best-informed, savviest and most conservative lawyer in the administration, someone who spoke for and acted with the full backing of the powerful vice president, and someone who crushed bureaucratic opponents.\ufffd When Goldsmith presented his analysis of the Geneva Conventions at the White House, Addington, according to Goldsmith, became livid. \ufffdThe president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,\ufffd Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. \ufffdYou cannot question his decision.\ufffd (Addington declined to comment on this and other details concerning him in this article.)

...

In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: \ufffdThey blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,\ufffd he writes. Goldsmith\ufffds first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or \ufffdstrict compartmentalization,\ufffd in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.\ufffds inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel\ufffds legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. \ufffdBefore I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department\ufffds legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,\ufffd Goldsmith writes.

...

Goldsmith, Comey, Mueller and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign en masse if the White House implemented the program over their objections. Two days later, Comey had a conversation at the White House with Bush in which the president told him to do whatever was necessary to make the program legal. And in the end, the entire controversy was arguably unnecessary since the program was eventually approved by Congress and brought, at least partially, under the supervision of the FISA Court, as it could have been from the beginning. \ufffdI was sure the government was going to melt down,\ufffd Goldsmith told me. \ufffdNo one anticipated they were going to reverse themselves.\ufffd

The heroes of Goldsmith\ufffds book \ufffd his historical models of presidential leadership in wartime \ufffd are Presidents Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both of them, as Arthur Schlesinger noted in his essay \ufffdWar and the Constitution,\ufffd \ufffdwere lawyers who, while duly respecting their profession, regarded law as secondary to political leadership.\ufffd In Goldsmith\ufffds view, an indifference to the political process has ultimately made Bush a less effective wartime leader than his greatest predecessors. Surprisingly, Bush, who is not a lawyer, allowed far more legalistic positions in the war on terror to be adopted in his name, without bothering to try to persuade Congress and the public that his positions were correct. \ufffdI don\ufffdt know if President Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making,\ufffd Goldsmith told me. \ufffdIt\ufffds hard to know how he would know.\ufffd

The Bush administration\ufffds legalistic \ufffdgo-it-alone approach,\ufffd Goldsmith suggests, is the antithesis of Lincoln and Roosevelt\ufffds willingness to collaborate with Congress. Bush, he argues, ignored the truism that presidential power is the power to persuade. \ufffdThe Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action and legalistic defense,\ufffd Goldsmith concludes in his book. \ufffdThis approach largely eschews politics: the need to explain, to justify, to convince, to get people on board, to compromise.\ufffd

Goldsmith says he remains convinced of the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the need to take aggressive action to combat it, but he believes, quoting his conservative Harvard Law colleague Charles Fried, that the Bush administration \ufffdbadly overplayed a winning hand.\ufffd In retrospect, Goldsmith told me, Bush \ufffdcould have achieved all that he wanted to achieve, and put it on a firmer foundation, if he had been willing to reach out to other institutions of government.\ufffd Instead, Goldsmith said, he weakened the presidency he was so determined to strengthen. \ufffdI don\ufffdt think any president in the near future can have the same attitude toward executive power, because the other institutions of government won\ufffdt allow it,\ufffd he said softly. \ufffdThe Bush administration has borrowed its power against future presidents.\ufffd
Seamus
New Sounds like it'll be an interesting book. Thanks.
\ufffdMrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn\ufffdt believe what she saw happening to her sick husband, looked at Gonzales and Card as they walked out of the room and stuck her tongue out at them. She had no idea what we were discussing, but this sweet-looking woman sticking out her tongue was the ultimate expression of disapproval. It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.\ufffd


:-)

Cheers,
Scott.
Expand Edited by Another Scott Sept. 4, 2007, 10:56:59 AM EDT
     Conscience of a Conservative - (Seamus) - (1)
         Sounds like it'll be an interesting book. Thanks. - (Another Scott)

The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.
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