One of the things I’ve always found most attractive about McCain is that he has all of President Bush’s resolve in the war on terror without the weird excesses. Jacob Sullum has evidence that I may have been wrong in this:
…I noted that John McCain seemed to have a less expansive view of presidential authority than George W. Bush. Now the distance between them seems to be shrinking. In a recent letter to National Review Online, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin reported that the Arizona senator believes President Bush acted within his constitutional authority when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by approving warrantless monitoring of international communications involving people in the United States. According to Holtz-Eakin, who was responding to an NRO post by Andrew McCarthy that questioned whether McCain was sufficiently supportive of Bush’s position on this issue, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate believes “neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.”
Holtz-Eakin added that as president, “John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from [terrorist] threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.” The reference to Article II clearly implies that McCain would feel free to violate any statute he believed impeded his ability to conduct anti-terrorist surveillance.
…
There is no ambiguity as to whether FISA required warrants for the sort of surveillance Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct, and the argument that Congress unintentionally amended FISA when it authorized the use of military force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban does not pass the laugh test. The only real issue is whether the president has the constitutional authority to disregard statutes such as FISA when they get in the way of actions he considers necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. In December, McCain said the president does not have that authority; now he says “there’s ambiguity about it.”
Dammit, John. When it comes down to it, the actual wiretapping probably isn’t the hugest deal in the world, though I’ll add that that hardly makes it right. What kills me about the whole business, though, is that the president — upon realizing that the FISA bill was antiquated and unduly impeded necessary surveillances of terrorists — decided to simply ignore it. It never even crossed their minds to go to Congress and say, “Hey, this FISA thing is a disaster. We need to change it.” Unfortunately, this sort of “It’s my constitution, I’ll do what I want!” attitude is perfectly justified in America today, so long as you can plausibly tie it to fighting terrorism.
Tom posted this at 11:38 AM EDT on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Audacity of Hype, Liberty and/or Security
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If you’ve ever read David Frum’s How We Got Here, two things that strike you are both his sympathy for people in situations that they can’t understand and his omnivorous learning. He has an uncanny knack for tying small issues together with large ones and thus illustrating a common concept.
Something has long been wrong with the Bush administration; this we all know. The question has been, what specifically is wrong? Frum’s answer: personnel is policy, and the way Bush manages people weeds out good people. (Frum himself was on staff, but lasted less than two years.) How did Scott McClellan go from a political hack in Texas to the White House press office to the hottest thing on amazon.com? From Frum’s National Post column:
As the current press secretary Dana Perino daily reminds us, you don’t have to be a genius to succeed as press secretary. But you do need (1) composure under fire, (2) verbal fluency, (3) an understanding of the imperatives of the news business and (4) access to the interior workings of the administration. McClellan never possessed qualities (1) and (2), and his colleagues refused to grant him (4).
In these deficiencies, McClellan was not alone. George W. Bush brought most of his White House team with him from Texas. Except for Karl Rove, these Texans were a strikingly inadequate bunch. Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzalez, Karen Hughes, Al Hawkins, Andy Card (the last not a Texan, but a lifelong Bush family retainer) — they were more like characters from The Office than the sort of people one would expect to find at the supreme height of government in the world’s most powerful nation. McClellan, too, started in Bush’s governor’s office, and if he never belonged to the innermost circle of power, he nonetheless gained closer proximity than would be available to almost anyone who did not first serve in Texas.
That early team was recruited with one paramount consideration in mind: loyalty. Theoretically, it should be possible to combine loyalty with talent. But that did not happen often with the Bush team.
Bush demanded a very personal kind of loyalty, a loyalty not to a cause or an idea, but to him and his own career. Perhaps unconsciously, he tested that loyalty with constant petty teasing, sometimes verging on the demeaning. (Robert Draper, whose book Dead Certain offers a vivid picture of the pre-presidential Bush, tells the story of a 1999 campaign-strategy meeting at which Bush shut Karl Rove up by ordering him to “hang up my jacket.” The room fell silent in shock — but Rove did it.)
These little abuses would often be followed by unexpected acts of thoughtfulness and generosity. Yet the combination of the demand for personal loyalty, the bullying and the ensuing compensatory love-bombing was to weed out strong personalities and to build an inner circle defined by a willingness to accept absolute subordination to the fluctuating needs of a tense, irascible and unpredictable chief.
Had Bush been a more active manager, these subordinated personalities might have done him less harm. But after choosing people he could dominate, he then delegated them enormous power. He created a closed loop in which the people entrusted with the most responsibility were precisely those who most dreaded responsibility — Condoleezza Rice being the most important and most damaging example.
In one column, Frum has explained how so many momentous decisions fell into the hands of people who, like Bartleby the Scrivener, would prefer not to. In short, Frum has explained why What Happened happened. Frum has already written one book where he explained what he thought was good and bad about this presidency; I hope he writes another, now that we know more.
Hubbard posted this at 9:50 AM EDT on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Politics, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
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Once again, constitutional scholar John Yoo is making headlines, thanks to his recently declassified memo. I think this is a good opportunity to take time to revisit a classic example of Yoo’s legal argumentation.
This is what it takes to get onto the faculty of the #6 law school in the country.
Geoff posted this at 6:02 PM EDT on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 as Conservatism, George Bush Sucks!, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution, Amer-I-Can!, Global War on Terror
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Vice President Dick Cheney, 2008:
RADDATZ:Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
President Abraham Lincoln, 1858:
In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
The greatest failing of the Bush Administration isn’t its inability to communicate; it’s its abject refusal to even make an effort at it. I don’t want an administration whose policies are set by today’s polls, but I also don’t want one who treats us with such foolish — such unnecessary! — contempt.
As Jonah Goldberg argued last year, Cheney’s stoicism would be a lot more admirable if only it wasn’t so stupid.
Tom posted this at 9:12 PM EDT on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Politics and the English Language
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A brilliant post by Lee at RTLC. I really have nothing further to add.
Jamie posted this at 10:47 AM EST on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Global War on Terror
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All this McCain bashing is really starting to piss me off. All you “conservatives” who stood by Bush as he created huge increases in entitlement spending, passed protectionist trade tariffs, further federalized education and advocated a war plan that made our military look like a joke can just go to hell.
I’m looking at you Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin and Fox News.
You others, well you know who you are.
Jamie posted this at 6:25 PM EST on Friday, February 8th, 2008 as Conservatism, George Bush Sucks!, Audacity of Hype
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