Below The Beltway

Bob Barr speaks the truth on the issue of Presidential power grabs:

Doug Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s chief policy adviser, recently contended that the Constitution gives the president unilateral authority to spy on Americans without congressional authority. “Along with President George W. Bush, Sen. McCain seems to believe that the president, like the British king of old, possesses unconstrained and unreviewable power,” warns Barr. “This is a truly shocking claim: when the American colonists created a new nation, they were determined to limit both government and executive power.”

Indeed, if the president can do whatever he deems necessary in wartime, and America is a battlefield, then the executive branch can ignore the entire Constitution whenever the president believes convenient. “This is not the republic under law in which Americans thought they were living,” insists Barr.

Sen. McCain has sought to distance himself from President Bush, but he now sounds like a member of the Bush administration. “The Constitution must come before any political party,” says Barr.

Of course, the government must combat those who would do us ill, but, emphasizes Barr, “the Constitution establishes oversight and accountability for every executive power.” Lord Acton warned us many years ago that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It is no different in America. “The next president must reverse the aggrandizement of power to the executive branch and defend the privacy and liberties of Americans from every encroachment,” says Barr.

One of the chief problems with the Bush Administration that loyalist conservatives refuse to acknowledge is the extent to which, under the guise of national security, it has extended the powers of the Presidency and asserted the argument that the Executive Branch is, in effect, outside the law. It has used such arguments to justify wiretaps initiated without Court Order or review, the detention of American citizens without access to the Courts, and torture.

The ironic thing is that, if the President who did this things had a “D” after their name, the right-wing scream machine would be the first to claim we were on the road to tyranny. When George W. Bush does it, they not only don’t seem to mind, they actually justify it.

A far cry from the words of Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 69:

[E]xcept as to the concurrent authority of the President in the article of treaties, it would be difficult to determine whether that magistrate would, in the aggregate, possess more or less power than the Governor of New York. And it appears yet more unequivocally, that there is no pretense for the parallel which has been attempted between him and the king of Great Britain. But to render the contrast in this respect still more striking, it may be of use to throw the principal circumstances of dissimilitude into a closer group.

Even an advocate for strong national government as vociferous as Hamilton was would, I think, be shocked beyond belief at what the Presidency has evolved into and what has been done in its name over the past seven years.