NY Times Editorial: "Just what the Founders Feared"

In an excellent editorial in the New York Times, Adam Cohen lays out my favorite argument for impeachment: the unitary, 'monarchical' presidency and the dangers it poses to our democracy:

"Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”

The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

And as James Madison himself once warned, war is the obvious tool for any president intent on gaining excessive powers that would never be allowed in peacetime:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and ... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. - James Madison

We have certainly noticed how Mr Bush uses 'the war', 'national security' and 'executive privilege' as excuses for obstructing any congressional oversight. If there were no war, he would have no basis at all for any of these claims... and even with the war, his basis is extremely weak.

Cohen goes on to remind us that:

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The biggest power invested in Congress, is the power to cut off funding for a war that is not in the best interests of the nation. This is one of the gravest, most critical roles of Congress in wartime. And one that Congress absolutely must uphold:

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

The Tillman case is but one example: how on earth can Bush claim 'executive privilege' for failing to disclose information about the death of former Cardinals football player Pat Tillman by friendly fire? Will this information somehow 'embolden' an already emboldened enemy?

Please.

Abuse of power is abuse of power. Attacks on the Constitution are not to be allowed, if we are to remain a free people living in a free democracy.

If we cannot end this war, then we must reign in this executive branch that continues to promote this war for it's own self interest. If the war continues unabated... if Congress refuses to use the 'power of the purse,' we stand to lose not just our army, our 'treasure,' and our status in the world -- but likely our democracy as well.

Our founders predicted this. The knew all of this from firsthand experience with a tyrannical monarch, and they wrote everything down as a warning for future generations, and built our Constitution around it. Alas, if only we would look back to our very own history for guidance. It's all there: in their words, and in our laws.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. - James Madison