Ron Paul Co-option Watch
Today’s edition brought to you by Fred Thompson:
Thompson agreed that he didn’t share the views of Vice President Cheney when it comes to the supremacy of the executive branch.
“No, I think the constitution in times of war, especially, is very definitive about that,” he said. “The president is the commander in chief, but the Congress has the power of the budget. The power of the purse. So everything has to go through that prism. So it’s divided power in the constitution. Our founding fathers divided that up. Divided it up at the federal level, the idea being that things like Watergate should be made very difficult to happen. So no one branch of the government can misuse power.”
Thompson described checks and balances as “a constant tug and pull. Controversy and differences of opinion over legitimate national security concerns is not a bad thing. Every branch needs to stand up for itself. And I saw that as, in effect, an attorney for the executive branch, and then as a legislator.”
Fred’s always decent, rhetorically, on these kinds of questions, but still, this is a little more constitution-oriented in dissent of the current executive than he tends to get normally.
The Right’s Field contends that there’s less here than meets the eye (and I agree with them):
Later in the interview, he says he agrees with the Bush Administration on “issues of surveillance,” which after all was what Watergate was about. Plus, he tries hard to frame Congress’ power as solely through the funding mechanism, while saying vaguely that “All the executive authority rests in the president.” In Thompson’s view, if the Congress disagrees with something the executive does, they can refuse to fund it. Of course, this isn’t Congress’ only power, they write the laws and have the explicit power to declare war. But Thompson tries to elide that basic Constitutional reading.
What this does show is that, even in the case of a so-called “skeptic” of unitary executive theory, the next President is going to have a big toolbox of new powers and isn’t going to be too concerned about giving them away. That holds whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat.
Of course, that’s kind of the new reconceptualization of executive power. The executive has as much power as it can get away with. It isn’t proscribed by anything but the ability of Congress to push back. This is almost, bizarrely, sort of misapplied hierarchical free market thinking—that a CEO’s only responsibility is to his shareholders, and he ought to do all he can to maximize profits, and consumers then ought to do all they can to channel that profit drive in ways they prefer (with employees and the board of directors, I suppose, representing Congress here). And whatever the CEO does to expand the company in a way that doesn’t run afoul of consumers is a-okay.
The problem with that thinking is A. that the President is more insulated from his consumers than are CEOs. That’s the Bush “I’ve had one accountability moment in 8 years: the 2004 elections” attitude. He doesn’t give a shit how his stock is doing on a day to day basis. But also, B. even CEOs, in the course of chasing profits, are still accountable to not run afoul of the law. The President, largely, is not. Or at least there’s no power OVER or BEYOND him by which to enforce anything.
But, in a way, it does go back to Congress, and to voters. I think it goes well beyond just funding—Fred is, of course, one to scream bloody murder about Congress not rubber stamping appointments fast enough, and for that matter about “judicial activism”. And I think that the President is, or ought to be, inherently confined by the legal framework under which the executive branch is authorized in all its authority. But, it’s hard to disagree with the general thrust of what Fred’s saying, and I’d rather lip service to constitutionality than no service at all.