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[H2O Man]

“The Nixon theoreticians even tried to transform reverence into an ideology, propagating the doctrine, rather novel in the United States, that institutions of authority were entitled to respect per se, whether or not they had done anything to earn respect. If authority were denied respect, the syllogism ran, the whole social order would be in danger. ‘Your task, then, is clear,’ my friend Pat Moynihan charged his President in 1969: ‘To restore the authority of American institutions.’ But should institutions expect obedience they do not, on their record of performance, deserve? To this question the Nixon ideologues apparently answered yes. An older American tradition would say no, incredulous that anyone would see this as a question. In that spirit I would argue that what this country needs today is a little serious disrespect for the office of the Presidency; a refusal to give any more weight to a President’s words than the intelligence of the utterance, if spoken by anyone else, would command; an understanding of the point made so aptly by Montaigne: ‘Sit he on never so high a throne, a man still sits on his own bottom.’

“And what if men not open and modest, even at the start, but from the start ambitious of power and contemptuous of law reached the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln? What if neither personal character, nor play of politics, nor the Constitution itself availed to hold a President to strict accountability?”
-- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; The Imperial Presidency; 1973; pages 410-411.


I enjoyed a long telephone conversation with my brother last night. He is employed by the University of Oregon, and in that capacity, has had the opportunity to become more familiar with the work of a professor who studies climate change. Coming from that perspective, he voiced frustration with President Obama, who he believes -- while certainly better than a George W. Bush or Willard Romney -- is not aggressive enough in challenging the system of economic exploitation that enriches the 1% while poisoning the living environment.

In his opinion, President Obama is hesitant to engage in conflicts where he does not have a good chance of winning. I mentioned that health care and common sense gun control were tough issues, where President Obama risked/risks failure. He countered that Obama is always willing to compromise with the republicans who front for corporate interests, and noted that in the context of a damaged environment, human beings’ health suffers -- was this not exactly the point of my epidemiological study of Sidney, NY? He said that any serious attempt to improve medical services would have to address the toxins that are poisoning the American people. He said that he had more respect for someone like me, who would attempt to win the Good Fight, even when the odds were very much against me, than a politician who constantly compromises with corporate interests.

One could easily dismiss my brother’s positions by saying he doesn’t understand how things are accomplished in our system. Yet, if one is familiar with our system of government, including being fully aware of both how our constitutional system is supposed to work, and how Washington actually does work, his position seems valid. Let’s consider the example of President Obama’s drone program.

Schlesinger’s book on the “Imperial Presidency” is useful in defining some of the dynamics at play in the drone controversy. It really should, at least in my opinion, be required reading for high school students. The author describes how the majority of US Presidents attempt to increase the power of the executive branch of the government. To do so requires a weakening of three important things: the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government, and of the Constitution.

While Schlesinger’s primary target was then President Richard Nixon, he documents the manner in which Presidents expand executive power: it is always done with “national security” as justification. More, in the modern era, the claim is made that advances in technology, which the Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen, require this President to take bold steps towards protecting democracy ….while trampling the US Constitution.

Now let’s look at some of the consequences. We will start with none other than Richard Nixon, at the time he served as vice president. Nixon, as I have previously noted on this forum, was not the weak figure that many believe he was as VP. (It is fair to question if President Eisenhower was fully aware of much that VP Nixon was up to.) For example, Nixon played a leading role in dictating US policy towards Central and South America. The most famous example of this is found in the origins of the doomed operation known as the Bay of Pigs. This is important because, at the time Nixon became vice president, the CIA was supposed to be a 100% intelligence agency, meaning to gather and evaluate information. The Bay of Pigs would highlight the dangers of having an intelligence group become operational in military matters.

Fast forward to the Nixon presidency, and those same dangers become more pronounced. While the “Nixon ideologues” would hold that this was to spread democracy abroad, no informed person could deny that Nixon’s misuse of intelligence and police agencies posed a serious threat to our constitutional democracy. Indeed, one of the most damning facts that the various post-Watergate congressional investigating committees uncovered was the history of the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders -- though not with drones -- at the same time the executive office was having intelligence and police agencies attacking American groups and individuals who were exercising their constitutional right to protest the President’s domestic and foreign policies.

It is impossible for an administration to enhance democracy, either at home or abroad, by way of secret policies that break Constitutional Law. This simply cannot be done. Rather, such policies can only enhance the strength of non-democratic institutions, such as the corporations destroying the environment for financial gain, and increase the amount of hatred for America in foreign lands.

These are the types of issues that create tensions and divisions within the Democratic Party. And I’ll include those who, while not registered Democrats, helped to elect and re-elect President Obama. As is said so often, there are those who despised George W. Bush for violating the Constitution, but who accept President Obama’s engaging in much the same activities. And there are those who do not believe we should be the Democratic Party, Inc. We see that even here, on the Democratic Underground.

Peace,
H2O Man