Codpiece Fatigue

by digby

Do you remember the term “Clinton fatigue?” You know, back when everybody was really, really tired of peace and prosperity and talking about oral sex? (You can understand why everyone wanted our long national nightmare to be over…)

It occurs to me that some conservatives, at least the educated ones, must be feeling some serious “Bush fatigue” about now. When they hear ignorant, puerile drivel like this come out of his mouth, some of them (a couple of them?) must look at the calendar and count the days until their personal nightmare is over:

“It didn’t say we couldn’t have done — couldn’t have made that decision, see?” Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. “They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.”

I’m the decider, see. They accepted my decision, see.

Whenever he sounds this moronic I’m reminded that it’s probably how it was explained to him. That “see” is the tip-off. He can’t actually understand the decision and then go out and expect that people won’t think he’s a complete idiot for saying what he just said. He doesn’t get it. Nobody can spin that badly, not even him.

As TBOGG put it, this is Bush’s version of: “That chick at the bar? She’s totally digging on me.”

Update: Jeff Jacoby apparently thinks that because Bush says he takes the Supreme Court decsions “seriously” it means he isn’t seizing dictatorial powers. After repeating Andrew Jackson’s famous saying “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it” Jacoby writes:

President Bush learns the court’s ruling in Hamdan has gone against him. A five-justice majority held the military commissions created by the administration to try the Guantanamo detainees are invalid, since they were never authorized by congressional statute. The justices seem to have repudiated Bush’s claim that the Constitution invests the president with sweeping unilateral authority in wartime. “The court’s conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground,” Justice Stephen Breyer pointedly notes in a concurrence. “Congress has not issued the Executive a ‘blank check.’ “

Whereupon Bush says — what? “The justices have made their decision; now let them enforce it”? Something even more acid? Perhaps he repeats a statement he has made previously — “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best”?

Not quite. He says he takes the court’s decision “seriously.” A few moments later he says it again. And then comes this: “We’ve got people looking at it right now to determine how we can work with Congress, if that’s available, to solve the problem.” There is no disdain. No bravado. No criticism. Just an acknowledg ment that the Supreme Court has spoken and the executive branch will comply.

Some dictator.

It isn’t 1832 anymore. Even presidents who are aggressive in their claims of authority don’t flout Supreme Court decisions. Harry Truman relinquished the steel mills, Richard Nixon turned over the Watergate tapes, Bill Clinton submitted to Paula Jones’s deposition. Al Gore conceded the 2000 election. Now Bush will acquiesce as well.

For better or worse, our legal system as it has evolved makes the judiciary, not the president, “the decider.” Bush presses his claims forcefully, as he is entitled to do — but only to a point. We remain a nation of laws, not of men. For all the promiscuous talk about dictatorship, was that ever really in doubt?

Perhaps Jacoby doesn’t know that congress tried to strip the court of jurisdiction in any cases such as this — even going so far as to insert a bogus debate into the record so that the court would be misled as to the intent of the congress when that failed.

There is no guarantee that the Eunuch Caucus would not happily hand over all its constitutional powers to Bush — and strip the court of all of it powers while they’re at it. The only thing keeping them from it is the fact that they haven’t figured out how to finesse stealing an election where the polls have the GOP down by more than a few points before election day. But they’re working on it.

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