Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

leadership in the long emergency S 95
and a great deal more. Such things are now possible because the
system of checks and balances carefully written into the Constitution
and explained in great detail in the Federalist Papers was systematically
undone, partly as a result of historical circumstances of
the 20th century, but with a vengeance by the Bush administration.
Said to be necessary in order to protect the country from terrorism,
this expansion of presidential authority was in truth carried
out by ruthless right-wing ideologues who smelled opportunity
in the smoke and ashes of 9/11. While things appeared to be going
well, they were abetted by corporate opportunists wanting less regulation
and higher profi ts, the well-to-do wanting lower taxes, a
compliant media eager to please, megachurch zealots intending to
replace democracy with theocracy, a ragtag army of the congenitally
angry, an opposition party that forgot how to oppose, and a
drowsy citizenry too distracted to notice the erosion of their liberties.
Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and their allies, for a
time, conjured up James Madison’s worst nightmare—the unifi cation
of once carefully separated powers of government—executive,
judicial, legislative—in the hands of a single faction, along with substantial
control over newspapers, radio, and television and an extensive
police and surveillance apparatus he would have loathed. In the
words of attorney Scott Horton, “subverting an entire legal apparatus
requires great effort. Laws must be circumvented, civil servants
thwarted, and opposing politicians intimidated into silence” (2008,
p. 38). And they were . . . for a time.
President Obama must decide the degree to which he will
openly dissociate himself from the expanded powers of the Bush
administration. But the historical record gives little encouragement
about the contraction of presidential power. Typically, the
expanded powers of one president are carefully guarded by successors.
The president has distanced himself from the more controversial
actions of the Bush administration, but as a matter of
political expediency, not for reasons embedded in the Constitution
or law. In Horton’s words: