What would the Founders think?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Much food for thought from Andrew Sullivan:

Maybe this isn't acknowledged enough, but it seems to me that the Founders would for the first time be pleased with how the United States has been adjusting policy and personnel in wartime this past year. I think when historians look back, they will note a few things. The first is that an untrammeled executive branch, high on its own rightness, certain of everything, contemptuous of critics and empowered by understandable public fear... made all the mistakes you'd expect from one-man rule in a permanent "emergency". The half-assed commitment to Afghanistan, the reckless over-reach with Iraq, the embrace of torture as a primary weapon in the war against Islamic terrorism, the loss of critical allies, the collapse of American moral standing, and then apocalyptic rhetoric over Iran: all this was fueled by a president with no impediments, sealed in an ideological cocoon wound more tightly by his re-election, a victory that reinforced all of his worst instincts in the first term, and lost us two critical years in Iraq.

Far be it from me to try to delve into the minds of the Founders -- at least not here, at this late hour -- but I do think they would generally be appalled by the Bush presidency. And although Andrew is right that policy has been adjusted, it must be stressed that all of the items he lists here are still being fueled from an ideological cocoon. The White House is still self-righteous and contemptuous and still operates according to a self-defined state of permanent emergency.

Further, I'm not so sure the White House now faces such robust impediments. Andrew is right that last November's Democratic victory had its positive consequences, notably with respect to Bush's foreign policy: there is now Gates, not Rumsfeld; Rice is working on diplomacy, not warmongering; etc. But other than that -- what? Have the Democrats really saved the war in Iraq, as Andrew suggests? Hardly. It was simply time for Rumsfeld to go, and he went. Rice is battling Cheney, but she has along been part of the problem, not the answer to the problem, and the recent foray back into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is too little too late and arguably a last-ditch effort to salvage something for Bush's legacy.

If anything, it's not so much that Bush has been reined it but that he is now, finally, at long last, politically bankrupt. Meanwhile, the commitment in Afghanistan remains "half-assed," Iraq remains a disaster, torture is still being used as a weapon (and is being advocated by Bush's would-be successors on the GOP side, with the exception of McCain), and, the NIE notwithstanding, the warmongering rhetoric on Iraq continues. As well, allies remain lost -- and those that are now more friendly, such as Germany and France, maintain their serious reservations. And it will take a long, long time for the U.S. to recover its "moral standing" -- or at least whatever moral standing it had even before Iraq, which may not have been much throughout much of the world.

Maybe Obama is the right way to go now, maybe not. I haven't yet made up my mind, except that the right choice will be the Democratic candidate. Andrew is right to praise the American system, which is indeed, more or less, self-correcting. This was the genius of the Founders at work. But he overstates the "course adjustment" that he claims has taken place during Bush's second term and particularly since the '06 midterm elections. The Democrats, both in Congress and on the stump, are, I think, working to check the presidency, to hold Bush to account, to block its attempts to trample all over the Constitution, both with respect to Iraq and other foreign and domestic policy issues. But they can only do so much and are, in my estimation, doing a lot less than they ought to be doing. And, of course, Bush is still the president, and is still doing much of what he has been doing all along. And therein lies the ongoing problem, one that historians, one hopes, will judge accordingly.