Rove's Revolution: Bash, Break and Borrow

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042505B.shtml

Rove's Revolution: Bash, Break and Borrow
By Stirling Newberry
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 25 April 2005

It won't be written on in the New York Times, nor will it be read by a newscaster on Fox News, but the left deserves to pat itself on the back and say "I told you so" about one of the most important events of recent years. I remember being in Florida during the election fight of 2000, holding a sign that said "Federal Constitution RIP." In the weeks that followed, the television told the story that it had been a "tie election," and pundits duly noted that Bush would have to "govern from the center," since he had a thin majority in the House, and the Senate was divided equally. The conventional wisdom of the day was that we were to have moderate, almost divided government. The view from the ground level was very different: even then, Bush was perceived as a radical, surrounded by radical advisors, who would not govern from the center, as befits someone who has barely squeaked into power, but from the hard right. The often-expressed fear was that Bush and his circle intended to change the very nature of America's constitutional order. <1>

Now, of course, it is conventional wisdom that we are in a moment of constitutional turbulence, in which the changes made to our constitutional order to accommodate the New Deal are under threat, and constitutional balancing mechanisms, such as the filibuster, are under attack. But, as importantly, we are speaking in constitutional terms: the debate over Social Security introduced us to "infinite time horizons" and arguments over where America would be two generations from now. From worry about what would happen to the budget this year, and how long it would take to get out of Iraq, to worrying about the far horizons of the future is a very large step indeed. Perhaps this language is less stirring than the Preamble to the Constitution of 1787, but it is, nonetheless, constitutional and not legislative language.

We usually think that great moments in nation building happened long ago. We read about the founding fathers, the renewal of the nation after the Civil War, or the New Deal, and feel that such moments in time are distant from our political reality, which is generally thought to be concerned with whether this judge will incrementally crimp particular rights, or whether that program should be given another 100 million dollars. But this is not the case for everyone: more and more there is a belief in America that we have reached a constitutional moment. For some, it was the impeachment in the late 1990s, for others, the election of 2000 - but now, with the debate over Social Security, it should be apparent to everyone. A nation that is arguing over 75 years in the future is engaged in a constitutional debate, in which the normal political calculus of what happens this year, next year, and perhaps five years ahead is all that matters.

That America has passed through great constitutional changes since the Constitution of 1787 was drafted is not a new idea. Most famously, Professor Bruce Ackerman of Yale,<2> in his two volume work We the People, argued that constitutional change is a process, and that three times in American history, there has been a moment in which the basic fabric of the constitutional order was in play. That the Civil War and the New Deal mark moments where the res publica, the public order, has changed. I have argued that we are living in one such moment now. But there is someone else who has believed we are in a time of constitutional change - perhaps you have heard of him: his name is Karl Rove, the man who is, in effect, George W. Bush's domestic policy Czar.

more at...http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042505B.shtml