Beyond the Imperial Presidency
    By Steve Chapman
    The Chicago Tribune

    Sunday 25 December 2005 (Excerpt...)


    President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the
federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should
not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but
doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.

    He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but
he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in
the man at the helm of government.

    His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential
prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's
secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong,
robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands
it."

    But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula:
What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that
weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is
unfair to emperors.

    Even people who should be on Bush's side are getting queasy. David
Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says in his efforts to
enlarge executive authority, Bush "has gone too far."

    He's not the only one who feels that way. Consider the case of Jose
Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in 2002 on suspicion of plotting to set off
a "dirty bomb." For three years, the administration said he posed such a
grave threat that it had the right to detain him without trial as an enemy
combatant. In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit
agreed.

    But then, rather than risk a review of its policy by the Supreme Court,
the administration abandoned its hard-won victory and indicted Padilla on
comparatively minor criminal charges. When it asked the 4th Circuit Court
for permission to transfer him from military custody to jail, though, the
once-cooperative court flatly refused.

    In a decision last week, the judges expressed amazement that the
administration suddenly would decide Padilla could be treated like a common
purse snatcher-a reversal that, they said, comes "at substantial cost to the
government's credibility." The court's meaning was plain: Either you were
lying to us then, or you are lying to us now.

    If that's not enough to embarrass the president, the opinion was written
by conservative darling J. Michael Luttig-who just a couple of months ago
was on Bush's short list for the Supreme Court. For Luttig to question
Bush's use of executive power is like Bill O'Reilly announcing that there's
too much Christ in Christmas.

    This is hardly the only example of the president demanding powers he
doesn't need. When American-born Saudi Yasser Hamdi was captured in
Afghanistan, the administration also detained him as an enemy combatant
rather than entrust him to the criminal justice system.

    But when the Supreme Court said he was entitled to a hearing where he
could present evidence on his behalf, the administration decided that was
way too much trouble. It freed him and put him on a plane back to Saudi
Arabia, where he may plot jihad to his heart's content. Try to follow this
logic: Hamdi was too dangerous to put on trial but not too dangerous to
release.

    The disclosure that the president authorized secret and probably illegal
monitoring of communications between people in the United States and people
overseas again raises the question: Why?

    The government easily could have gotten search warrants to conduct
electronic surveillance of anyone with the slightest possible connection to
terrorists. The court that handles such requests hardly ever refuses. But
Bush bridles at the notion that the president should ever have to ask
permission of anyone.

    He claims he can ignore the law because Congress granted permission when
it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. But we know that can't be
true. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales says the administration didn't ask for a
revision of the law to give the president explicit power to order such
wiretaps because Congress-a Republican Congress, mind you-wouldn't have
agreed. So the administration decided: Who needs Congress?