[Peace-discuss] Romney/cat/bag

[Morton K. Brussel]

It seems to me that the article by Greenwald largely belies the words  
of your opening paragraph.

--mkb

On Jan 1, 2008, at 8:57 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [There's not much policy difference amongst the "top-tier"  
> candidates for president.  They all have to buy the general policy  
> of the US ruling class on, say, killing people in the Middle East,  
> transferring money from the poor to the rich through the healthcare  
> system, etc.  (If they didn't, they'd have to sit at the kids'  
> table with Kucinich and Paul.)  So their problem is the Coke/Pepsi  
> problem: establish some product differentiation.  Since they can  
> only say the same veiled things on serious policy, they have to  
> talk about "character" or symbolic issues like evolution.  But  
> sometimes the veil slips, and one of them is unwise enough to say  
> something about the real policy that they all agree on (except K &  
> P).  That seems to have happened to Romney, but the media have  
> quickly covered it up.  --CGE]
>
> 	Mitt Romney's pursuit of tyrannical power, literally
> 	The candidate's answers to key questions of executive
> 	power are beyond disturbing.
> 	Glenn Greenwald
> 	Dec. 23, 2007 |
>
> In yet another superb piece of journalism, the peerless Charlie  
> Savage of The Boston Globe submitted to the leading presidential  
> candidates a questionnaire asking their views on 12 key questions  
> regarding executive power. Savage's article accompanying the  
> candidates' responses makes clear why these matters are so critical:
>
>     "In 2000, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were not asked about  
> presidential power, and they volunteered nothing about their  
> attitude toward the issue to voters. Yet once in office, they  
> immediately began seeking out ways to concentrate more unchecked  
> power in the White House -- not just for themselves, but also for  
> their successors. . . .
>
>     "Legal specialists say decisions by the next president --  
> either to keep using the expanded powers Bush and Cheney developed,  
> or to abandon their legal and political precedents -- will help  
> determine whether a stronger presidency becomes permanent.
>
>     "'The sleeper issue in this campaign involves the proper scope  
> of executive power,' said Richard Epstein, a University of Chicago  
> law professor."
>
> All of the leading Democrats -- Edwards, Dodd, Biden, Clinton,  
> Richardson and Obama -- submitted responses, as did Mitt Romney,  
> John McCain and Ron Paul. Refusing to respond to the questions were  
> -- revealingly -- Giuliani, Thompson and Huckabee. Significantly,  
> if not surprisingly, all of the candidates who did respond, with  
> the exception of Romney, repudiated most of the key doctrines of  
> the Bush/Cheney/Addington/Yoo theories of executive omnipotence, at  
> least for purposes of this questionnaire. I'll undoubtedly write  
> more about those responses shortly.
>
> But by far the most extraordinary answers come from Mitt Romney.  
> Romney's responses -- not to some of the questions but to every  
> single one of them -- are beyond disturbing. The powers he claims  
> the President possesses are definitively -- literally --  
> tyrannical, unrecognizable in the pre-2001 American system of  
> government and, in some meaningful ways, even beyond what the Bush/ 
> Cheney cadre of authoritarian legal theorists have claimed.
>
> After reviewing those responses, Marty Lederman concluded: "Romney?  
> Let's put it this way: If you've liked Dick Cheney and David  
> Addington, you're gonna love Mitt Romney." Anonymous Liberal  
> similarly observed that his responses reveal that "Romney doesn't  
> believe the president's power to be subject to any serious  
> constraints." To say that the President's powers are not "subject  
> to any serious constraints" -- which is exactly what Romney says --  
> is, of course, to posit the President as tyrant, not metaphorically  
> or with hyperbole, but by definition.
>
> Each of the questions posed by Savage is devoted to determining the  
> extent of presidential power the candidate believes exists and  
> where the limits are situated. On every issue, Romney either (a)  
> explicitly says that the President has the right to act without  
> limits of any kind or (b) provides blatantly nonresponsive answers  
> strongly insinuating the same thing.
>
> Just go and read what he wrote. It's extraordinary. Other than his  
> cursory and quite creepy concession that U.S. citizens detained by  
> the President are entitled to "at least some type of habeas corpus  
> relief" -- whatever "some type" might mean (Question 5) -- Romney  
> does not recognize a single limit on presidential power. Not one.
>
> And even with regard to his grudging allowance that American  
> citizens should have "some type of habeas relief," Romney -- and  
> only he -- implicitly endorses Alberto Gonzales' bizarre claim that  
> -- despite the clear language of Article I, Section 9 -- "nothing  
> in the Constitution confers an affirmative right to habeas  
> corpus" (Question 9). Under this twisted Romney/Gonzales view, the  
> right of habeas corpus -- which Thomas Jefferson described as "one  
> of the essential principles of our government" and "the only anchor  
> ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the  
> principles of its constitution" -- is not constitutionally  
> guaranteed to Americans but can be revoked at any time, for any  
> reason.
>
> In every area, Romney explicitly says that neither laws nor  
> treaties can limit the President's conduct. Instead, displaying the  
> fear-mongering cowardice that lies at the heart of Bush/Cheney  
> Republican power, Romney described the root of his view of the  
> world this way: "Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be  
> kept alive."
>
> Romney recited that cowardly platitude -- what has now become the  
> shameful flagship of the Republican Party -- in response to being  
> asked whether the President has the power to eavesdrop on Americans  
> without warrants even in the face of a law that makes it a crime to  
> do so. At its core, the defining principle of the Republican Party  
> continues to be a fear-driven repudiation of the American ethos as  
> most famously expressed by Patrick Henry, all in service of keeping  
> the citizenry in fear so the President can rule without limits.
>
> These are just some of the powers which Romney -- and, among the  
> respondents, Romney alone -- claimed the President possesses,  
> either by explicitly claiming them or refusing to repudiate them  
> when asked directly:
>
>     * to eavesdrop on Americans with no warrants, even if doing so  
> is in violation of Congressional law (Question 1);
>
>     * to attack Iran without Congressional authorization, even in  
> the absence of an imminent threat (Question 2);
>
>     * to disregard a congressional statute limiting the deployment  
> of troops (Question 3);
>
>     * to issue a signing statement reserving a constitutional right  
> to bypass laws enacted by Congress (Question 4);
>
>     * to disregard international human rights treaties that the US  
> Senate has ratified where said treaties, in his view, "impinge upon  
> the President's constitutional authority" (Question 8)
>
> Even more disturbing were the specific questions Romney refused to  
> answer. When asked if the President has the right to use  
> "interrogation techniques" that Congress, by law, has prohibited in  
> all circumstances, here is what Romney said (Question 7):
>
>     "A President should decline to reveal the method and duration  
> of interrogation techniques to be used against high value  
> terrorists who are likely to have counter-interrogation training.  
> This discretion should extend to declining to provide an opinion as  
> to whether Congress may validly limit his power as to the use of a  
> particular technique, especially given Congress's current plans to  
> try to do exactly that."
>
> Mitt Romney is running for President and proudly refuses to say if  
> he would obey the law regarding torture. Worse, he's citing  
> national security as an excuse for refusing to answer the question.  
> He's not even President yet, and he's already insisting that it's  
> too Top Secret for him even to participate in the debate over the  
> President's duties to abide by the law. Even considering where our  
> country has been taken with these matters, that's an astonishing  
> assertion -- that the Terrorists will win if Mitt Romney expresses  
> his views on whether the President must obey the law.
>
> Underscoring his authoritarian mentality, Romney refused to say  
> that there was even a single "executive power the Bush  
> administration has claimed or exercised that [he] think[s] is  
> unconstitutional" or even that there were any which were "simply a  
> bad idea" (Question 10). In Romney's view, the Leader has not erred  
> at all. Rather, this is the caricature of a response he gave to  
> that question:
>
>     "The Bush Administration has kept the American people safe  
> since 9/11. The Administration's strong view on executive power may  
> well have contributed to that fact."
>
> Romney perfectly expresses the driving view of our GOP-dominated  
> political culture over the last seven years, as profoundly un- 
> American as it is Orwellian: You are in grave danger of being  
> slaughtered by Terrorists. The only thing that matters is that your  
> Leader protect you. In order to be safe, you must place your blind  
> faith and trust in the Leader. There can be no limits on the  
> Leader's power -- not even ones you try to place on him through  
> your representatives in Congress -- otherwise you will be in severe  
> danger and might even lose your freedoms.
>
> In a Washington Post Op-Ed this morning, historian and George  
> Washington biographer Joseph Ellis labels Dick Cheney's quest for  
> limitless presidential power "historically myopic" and writes:
>
>     "Your opinion on the current debate about how much power the  
> executive branch should have will be significantly influenced if  
> you read the debates about the subject in the Constitutional  
> Convention and the states' ratifying conventions. For it will soon  
> become clear that the most palpable fear that haunted all these  
> debates was the specter of monarchy."
>
> Although one would not have thought it possible, a Mitt Romney  
> presidency, by his own description, would remove us still further  
> from those core principles. Romney isn't running to be President,  
> but to be King. Anyone who wants to dispute that ought to try to  
> distinguish the fantasies of power Romney is envisioning from those  
> the British King possessed in the mid-to-late 18th Century.
>
> -- Glenn Greenwald
>
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/23/romney/print.html
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