He Has Not Listened

by digby

I got yer plan for ya right here:

BLITZER: Are you in favor of using the power of the purse that Congress has to try to stop this war?

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON (D), NEW MEXICO: Yes. I believe because the president has not listened to the Congress, he hasn’t listened to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and to the American people, that overwhelmingly want a change of course, I believe that’s the function of the Congress, to deal with the appropriations process, find ways to at least this surge, to deny the funds to make it happen, because this is going to add to sectarian violence.

I would support a phased withdrawal, tie it to a political solution. There is no military solution. I would also organize a regional conference to get other states to help with the security and civil administration. I would talk to Iran and Syria to try to get the situation to at least a stable level.

I just believe that this is an ultimate decision by the Congress. But since the president doesn’t listen, he’s off in, I think, his own bubble. Unfortunately, that’s the course I believe the Congress needs to take.

Richardson is not given to shrillness. He’s probably running for president and he’s running as a national security specialist, which he is. This is no joke. If he’s saying this then Bush is in for trouble in the congress.

Not that it will do any good, mind you:

In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

“I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff,” Cheney said.

Most of Cheney’s colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of “disdain for the law.”

Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution “does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power.”

The Iran-contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power — nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president’s hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast “inherent” powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress.

Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration’s hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney’s staff has also been behind President Bush’s record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.

A close look at key moments in Cheney’s career — from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under the first President Bush — suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor, predicted that Cheney’s long career of consistently pushing against restrictions on presidential power is likely to culminate in a series of uncompromising battles with Congress.

“Cheney has made this a matter of principle,” Shane said. “For that reason, you are likely to hear the words ‘executive privilege’ over and over again during the next two years.”

Cheney declined to comment for this article. But he has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back “unwise” limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

“In 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job,” Cheney said on ABC in January 2002. “I feel an obligation…to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors.”

He couldn’t make it any clearer. My ongoing crusade to drive a stake through the conservative zombies is based on this very thing. This presidential infallibility doctrine came from the true father of the modern conservative movement, Richard Nixon. (Reagan was a prop.) Cheney’s not that smart and he isn’t that original. In fact he’s a rather simple Nixonian machine.

Despite the historically inept bleatings of journalists like Howard Fineman, who say that support for the war broke down on partisan lines, by 1970 both parties were divided on the war. In June of that year, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But as the NY Times reported at the time:

The legal effect of the vote which was 81 to 10 is probably minimal since the Nixon administration has stated that it is not relying on the resolution, requested by Lyndon B Johnson, as authority for policies in Indochina.

What do you suppose he was relying upon? Inherent powers, anyone?

Nixon said, “when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” Bush and Cheney obviously agree with that. (Cheney said it outright with respect to the Boland Amendment.) If he persists in being completely impervious to public criticism or congressional pressure, the only thing the congress can do to stop him is withhold funds or impeach him. That’s it. It remains to be seen if they have the stomach for it. Bill Richardson coming out for using the power of the purse is a good sign.

Also: One interesting thing to note here is that a “young Turk” Republican (as the NY Times referred to him) named Bob Dole seized control of that vote and pushed it through with another bill for complicated political reasons, royally irking the Democrats who accused them of rank partisanship. There was a lot of legislative jockeying going on during that period, as both parties prepared for the 1972 campaign. I would hope the Democrats would study this period to remind themselves how wily minority Republicans can politically work the war issue from the opposition as a Republican president does exactly what he wants to do under a theory of imperial presidency. This is deja-vu all over again and this time the Democrats have the benefit of hindsight.

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