Bush out to beef up presidency

The Detroit News/Drudge Report ^ | 05.20.02 | Bill Straub / Scripps Howard News Service

[callisto]

Critics claim office is more potent now than at any time in recent history.

WASHINGTON -- It's not a bad job considering it comes with a rent-free mansion and door-to-door limousine service, but President Bush maintains that the position he holds as the leader of the free world should come with an additional perk -- power.

[callisto]

I don't think he's a liar myself though.

You're posts belie that opinion.

[dsutah]

Probably because he/she would 'crack' if they actually
said something in approval of G. Bush. This seems
to scare them silly! (giggle)

[mrsmith]

""He (Bush) hasn't pointed to a single case," Fein said. "I've been around this town a long time, almost 30 years, and I've never encountered one individual who told me he's not going to the Oval Office unless he's promised confidentiality. It's the biggest hoax in the world. Why he's making up all this stuff is utterly and completely baffling." "

'"It is essential for the public interest that I should receive all the information possible respecting either matters or persons connected with the public. To induce people to give this information, they must feel assured that when deposited with me it is secret and sacred. Honest men might justifiably withhold information, if they expected the communication would be made public, and commit them to war with their neighbors and friends. "
Thomas Jefferson to John Smith, 1807

George Washington: "the Executive ought to communicate such papers as the public good would permit, and ought to refuse those, the disclosure of which would injure the public "

'...then Representative James Madison, proclaimed on the House floor "that the Executive had a right, under a due responsibility, also, to withhold information, when of a nature that did not permit a disclosure of it at the time.... If the Executive conceived that, in relation to his own department, papers could not be safely communicated, he might, on that ground refuse them, because he was the competent though responsible judge within his own department." '

[A.J.Armitage]

All politicians should be presumed to be liars.

[A.J.Armitage]

Wouldn't it be more fair to give him at least 1 1/2 more years before judging whether or not he has kept his word on campaign promises?

It's not the campaign promises, it's the claim that the executive branch is weak compared to the legislative branch.

[toenail]

"All politicians should be presumed to be liars."

In the faux duopoly we have now, yes.

There's only one person in national politics who has earned the trust of Americans to protect and defend the Constitution, so I sure as hell hope Ron Paul runs for POTUS. It would be nice to have a Constitutionalist in office.

[Tauzero]

I think he's sorely mistaken on some things and dangerously misguided on most others, but I don't see him finessing answers to questions like Clinton did. But that also means I don't believe, as his apologists do, that his apparent lapses in principle are part of some brilliant plan. No, Bush really is basically friendly to the status quo. The conservatives who feel betrayed were projecting. IMO many of those who still support him are also projecting. But they believe his apparent lapses in principle will all turn out to the good in the end, that us mere mortals, with our deprived perspectives, are not qualified to judge the divine plan.

I prefer to believe that what you see is what you get with Bush; that he has no secret strategies; that there have been no lapses in principle. His principles are simply different from mine.

[A.J.Armitage]

In the faux duopoly we have now, yes.

In all political systems.

There's only one person in national politics who has earned the trust of Americans to protect and defend the Constitution, so I sure as hell hope Ron Paul runs for POTUS. It would be nice to have a Constitutionalist in office.

Of course, a presumption can be overcome. The presumption of innocence is all the time. There are a lot more people in jail than there are Ron Pauls.

[Tauzero]

For example, Bush has said that he supports free trade. Yet he enacted protective tariffs on steel. At first blush this seems like a betrayal. But Bush is certainly not doing anywhere near what, say, Buchanan would like to do.

Bush favors free trade in general. But he does not favor it because he shares the set of ideological premises that produce absolutism on the issue. Bush is not an ideologue. He supports free trade in general because he thinks in general free trade is good policy that increases the happiness and well-being of the American people. Period.

Free traders who feel betrayed were simply projecting their sacred cows onto him. I daresay pro-lifers did also.

And we should all remember that this kind of pragmatism does not imply a lack of principles. Bush is a good father, a nice man, and a man of integrity. He is I think a man of virtue. He largely lacks the articulated principles of an ideologue. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. There are many horrible men who are pure adherents of one ideology or another. We can at least be sure that Bush will do nothing to harm us for the sake of some ideology.

[Uncle Bill]

Dictatorial Presidential Power

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush - Transition of Power: President-Elect Bush Meets With Congressional Leaders on Capitol Hill - Aired December 18, 2000.
Source

Shifting of Power From Washington Is Seen Under Bush

Dubya's New Deal - The New FDR

---

Roosevelt -- Man Of The Century?

By Joseph Farah
JUNE 4, 1999
Source

America is at a crossroads. We are entering perhaps the most pivotal period in the country's history since the Civil War. The very notions of freedom, individual rights and personal responsibility that made America the greatest nation on earth are at risk. And there is an active effort by some influential elitists to redefine those principles and ideals.

Matt Drudge reports that Time magazine will name Franklin Delano Roosevelt "Man of the Century" in January.

I don't know who the man of the century should be, but I do know that naming Roosevelt is a political act that says much about the thinking at Time. It's also a reflection of the generally corrupt and decadent state of American popular culture.

Drudge adds that Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson plans to write in that special issue about how FDR changed how Americans think about government -- and "what we owe it." And this is precisely why the scoop by Drudge is worth commenting upon.

Who was FDR? And what is his relevance today?

Any objective reading of history must result in the conclusion that Roosevelt abused his presidential powers in a way that was, if not unprecedented, certainly on a scale grander than any U.S. executive since Abraham Lincoln. In his first year in office, Roosevelt issued 654 executive orders, including a sweeping Inaugural Day proclamation that closed all banks for four days to restructure the country's entire financial system -- laying the groundwork for his New Deal revolution.

During the rest of his 12-year presidency, Roosevelt issued some 3,700 executive orders.

In 1933, Roosevelt declared a "national emergency" -- a move that concentrated new powers in the executive branch of government. Though every president since George Washington had used executive orders, Roosevelt took advantage of the fact that Congress had never defined their limits. In effect, Roosevelt, even before America's entry into World War II, became a dictator-in-waiting, assuming powers never imagined for the presidency by the founding fathers.

Before Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941, Roosevelt had already issued executive orders seizing an aircraft plant in California, a shipbuilding company and 4,000 coal mines. Later, of course, in 1942, Roosevelt drafted the executive order that resulted in the placement of Americans of Japanese descent in detention camps.

Roosevelt set the standard for modern presidents in what has become, ever since, a perpetual grab for imperial powers. And why is this so important today? Because the president sitting in the White House today, and scheduled to leave in January 2001, idolizes Roosevelt and has plummeted to new depths in his abuse of executive powers.

Are Time and the rest of the media elite preparing us for even more abuse leading up to the next election? That's the way I see it. Time is planning its biggest selling issue in history around the celebration of tyranny American-style in the persona of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

They are preparing to revise history in an effort to pave the way for yet another power grab by government. Whether it's setting the stage for the continuation of a Clinton presidency beyond his legal term limit or for the election of a new Roosevelt-style politician in 2000, there is a definite agenda at work in the corporate suites of Time Inc. and other assets of the government-media complex.

Because of the groundbreaking power grabs by Roosevelt, America now has a legacy of national emergency declarations that can, at a moment's notice, turn this country into a totalitarian police state. The apparatus for such a coup has been in place since the John F. Kennedy administration. No president has resorted to using the executive order to scrap the Constitution and the balance of power before, but we have never had a Bill Clinton in the White House, either.

This is a president who relishes pushing the envelope -- in his personal life as well as his public life. It was his top aide, Paul Begala, who boasted in 1998 that Clinton would use executive orders to go over the heads of Congress to achieve his legislative goals.

"Stroke of the pen. Law of the land," Begala was quoted as saying in The New York Times.

Later, he told the Wall Street Journal, "This president has a very strong sense of the powers of the presidency, and is willing to use all of them."

It's not always easy to believe what this administration says, but, on this point, I take what they say at face value.

What a time to be glorifying the father of modern presidential power abuse. The next national emergency could well be free America's last.

FDR and the “National Emergency”

The U.S. National Emergency

[nunya bidness]

I saw the post and thought to flag you but you were already there.

Thanks UB, you rock.

[Texasforever]

I find it amazing that many on here that "fear" a strong executive, are the same ones demanding that Bush act as a dictator when it comes to their pet issues. The hypocrisy is breath taking.

[Scholastic]

Thank you Uncle Bill! Wonderful!

[Tauzero]

"I find it amazing that many on here that "fear" a strong executive, are the same ones demanding that Bush act as a dictator when it comes to their pet issues."

Well, it's not self-contradictory to simultaneously want the executive to be weaker and to also use those powers considered rightfully his to the good.

But your point is well-taken.

[Scholastic]

well said!

[Askel5]

Your statement is untrue. He has defunded the UN abortion group (as far as the US goes), the Justice department has supported the Ohio partial-birth abortion law, and he has spoken about pro-life issues many times.

He also has personally taken it upon himself to nail open the most profitable window of Human Non-Personhood there is.

As evidenced by the flurry of entries in the Federal Register, Bush's decision has done more to facilite the ready manufacture, sale and purposeful destruction of human life than any act by any member of our government ever.

This would include both the Roe decision as well as the GOP-crafted tenets of our national population control policy -- STILL IN EFFECT, MIND YOU -- by which Legal Abortion is recognized as the linchpin of our success.

[Askel5]

He's not insane.

Agreed. And despite his ability to go for laughs with an "Oh please don't kill me" imitation of the woman he's about to put to death

His Favorite Philosopher working wonders on alcoholics
but metanoia and repentance by murderers being beyond His ken of course

I think he's a good guy for the most part who's just doing what he's told in the job for which he's been groomed in many respects all his life.

[Askel5]

Wouldn't it be more fair to give him at least 1 1/2 more years before judging whether or not he has kept his word on campaign promises?

Lol ...

[Askel5]

Great stuff, Uncle Bill. You're the best.