Gene Healy of the Cato Institute comments in a DC Examiner column “Right helped prepare the way for Obama’s imperial presidency” that in the last months of his administration, President Bush behaved like a “Roman dictator for economic affairs,” giving the thumbs up or down to companies seeking some of the $700 billion in taxpayer funds authorized by Congress for economic recovery. President Obama promised change, but in his first serious test, he failed.
Last Monday, in a case alleging that the executive branch had broken the law by facilitating the torture of terrorist suspects, the Obama administration took the same position the Bush administration had; arguing that the State Secrets privilege didn’t merely prevent the disclosure of sensitive pieces of evidence. It allowed the federal government to suppress the entire lawsuit and send the litigants home.
Providing more specifics, specifically Obama’s tortured assumption that he can simultaneously roll back executive power while providing salvation for the economy from the Oval Office, Healy draws this intersting conclusion:
For a generation, the conservative movement has fought to expand presidential power. In the wake of Watergate, conservatives resisted congressional checks on executive authority, and after 9/11, they insisted that only presidential leadership could save us from the threats we faced.
Perhaps they believed that the domineering presidency they championed could be neatly confined to foreign affairs. But thanks in large part to their efforts, Obama has inherited the most powerful presidency in American history. That ought to give conservatives pause.
Indeed, it should. What exactly is it conservatives stand for, anyway?
