Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. Emphasis added.
com·mis·sar (kŏm'ĭ-sär')1a An official of the Communist Party in charge of political indoctrination and the enforcement of party loyalty.
1b The head of a commissariat in the Soviet Union until 1946.
2. A person who tries to control public opinion.
The Political LeaderThe basis of Party organisation is the principle of leadership. The community cannot rule itself, either directly or indirectly. Whoever is best fitted for such a job should be a leader. Such a man will be supported by the confidence of the Folk. All Political Officers are held to have been appointed by the Leader and are answerable to him; towards their subordinates they enjoy full authority. What matters in the selection of Political Officers is to place the right man in the right post. The offices of the Party vary to such a degree that the accurate selection of leaders requires considerable knowledge of human nature as well as long experience. Age and social position are irrelevant, character and aptitude decisive.
by Guess Who
Didn't they try that with NASA already? The young man whose only credentials for his position of control were loyalty to the WH? Haven't this and other variants resulted in roll lists of scientists openly decrying the political pressure?
If the WH insists on even tighter attempts at control, it will be interesting to see if the Americans can stop their own leaders.
As Canadians, we certainly have an object lesson going on in front of us. And about a six month delay before we see a clone of it try to birth here.
Führerprinzip ought not to be turned into a verbal bag of doorknobs the way that 'commissar' already has been. I understand the analogy and all, but there are other analogies.
mahigan, how're you coming along with the POGGE market-failure statement?
there are other analogies
The newly appointed political officer responsible for compiling the Blogger's List of Approved Analogies hasn't reported for duty yet so we're muddling along without him as best we can.
I'd say "until then suspects should be shot," but then that would obviate the point of my humourless political correctness to begin with.
Jason Townsend:
There may be another analogies but I have to say I think this time this one is actually appropriate. I have been paying close attention to American politics for most of my life and what I have seen in the past five years in particular has really had some scary commonalities with some of the most dangerous regimes of the 20th century. The media management/spin/propaganda tools employed were where it was first most noticeable, then with the way Bushco lied America and Americans into an unprovoked war of aggression with massive consequences if unsuccessful blatantly obvious to anyone that actually bothered to look, and the internal security apparatus being built up by of all things a GOP President mostly supported unquestioningly by his controlling both houses of Congress GOP party until well after his second term started and only really started open opposition after the Democratic tsunami of 2006. This last one is where Mahigan's topic is the latest sign of, and it really does look frighteningly like what the older among us remember from the Cold War back to WWII with certain powers in the world.
So while I agree that such analogies are overused and often too often misapplied I don't think that is true in this case. I have watched this happen thanks to movement conservatism in the USA over the past thirty years now; this is why I am so opposed to any importation of their tactics and their thinking/ideological premises. I decided a long time ago that instead of being first concerned with ideology that it was more important to pay attention to the tools/methods employed in the service of that ideology and watch out for those tools which lead down the road to authoritarianism. While there are times (like in a major war, which neither Afghanistan nor Iraq truly qualify as although for somewhat different reasons) where such measures may be necessary to maintain the logistical capacity to wage that war that is most clearly *NOT* the case with what Bush/Cheney have done since they came to power and especially post 9/11/01.
This also goes to the heart of why when I see Harper and the CPC leadership calling for the services of Frank Luntz, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and others within the infamous College Republicans circle of movement conservatism in the GOP I consider it a very dangerous sign. It is not to be anti-American to oppose such thinking and people, indeed if anything one can make a very good case that it is to be pro-American. After all the rewriting of the American Constitution which is occurring under the direction of this Administration is profoundly anti-American in nature and is destroying that which was the best of that nation. Indeed, many of us that are so adamantly against Bushco are because of the damage his Administration has done by manipulating the fears of a traumatized public in the post 9/11/01 world. Instead of reducing the fear and channeling the anger is constructive ways Bushco exploited it for partisan political gains and Cheney in particular appears to have used it to enact his unitary executive theory claiming the powers of a President especially in times of war are essentially unlimited. That the President is above the law, a legal theory last espoused in American politics by one Richard Milhouse Nixon, which given the amount of this Administration got their starts in that one is alas no great shock.
When you take this and add it to the post right above it dealing with the increased restrictions for Americans to leave their country and some of the echoes of the past horrors are simply too strong to deny and therefore comparisons to such are within reason. Does it make it easier for some to brush off because of such an analogy, yes, but that does not make it any less fitting/appropriate and quite honestly anyone that doesn’t get at least a little sense of the parallels by this point...*shrug*
I wouldn't say they're rewriting the Constitution. I'd say they're ignoring it. Because they don't believe in it.
Slate had an "anti-Godwin's law" article after the mid-terms that was interesting, although I will always stick to my guns on only calling National Socialists National Socialists, only calling Italian Fascists Fascists, and so on.
I suppose why I replied is because the concept of führerprinzip is a somewhat "scholarly" one, which sort of makes me more inclined to quibble. And probably not coincidentally, I'm in the middle of some pretty heavy reading that deals with the business end of führerprinzip - individual low level initiative along the lines set by radical higher directives. Specifically, in the Soviet Union rear areas in 1941.
Perhaps I'm just trying to impose the hypersensitivity characteristic of the scholarship I'm most fond of in a context where it doesn't belong. I definitely havered before hitting "post."
pogge: The Yoo/Gonzales/Alito/Bush/Cheney vision of the constitution is a travesty, but it's reasonably certain they see themselves as 'saving' or 'improving' the document within the normal parameters of quasi-mythological reverence for its non-specific timeless perfection. Saying they're actually gleefully demolishing the hateful, hateful constitution is kind of in the realm of 'they hate freedom.' I think a multifaceted awareness of the enemy's psychology always trumps cathartic broad brushstrokes.
Ha! You haven't seen me cathart yet! (Yes, I realize that's not really a word.)
The "Home of the Free" with a political commissar in every government agency! Now there is a thought. A President sworn to uphold the Constitution replaced by partisan tools sworn to uphold the party line.
I have it on good authority that Bush has issued a signing statement suspending Godwin's Law for as long as he and Cheney occupy the White House.
And Jason, we don't really shoot humourless political correctness mavens any more - it's considered questionable form. Ah, could you just hold that target a little higher and over to the left a bit. ;-)
Jason Townsend:
Is not Bush reported to have angrily said of the Constitution, when at some point hearing that it caused difficulties for some policy, that it's "just a piece of paper"?
If so, it might be reasonable to suggest Bush himself, at least, doesn't revere it. And I would be not at all surprised if some of the others aren't too cynical to hold the feelings you ascribe to them. For the academics among the top Bushmen, I suspect Constitutions come under the heading of "noble lie"--they like having it there to inspire the public as long as it doesn't get in the way. I find it hard to imagine Cheney having respect for anything much.
Your description strikes me as more the way the second-rankers would think. Rumsfeld, perhaps, Ashcroft possibly, some of the right wing pundits, that sort of person.
I'm not a mind-reader, but I think I'm playing safe odds. Quote interpretation - above all from someone as incomprehensible as Bush - is a poor grounds for Kremlinology; you can play the same game to prove that Clinton 'hated' free speech, and he was no Bush.
I doubt anyone in the Bush White House actually inwardly sneers at the US Constitution; they sneer at their opponents, real and imagined, for 'hiding behind it,' at 'activist judges' for creating legal constraints using it, and so forth.
It's inherently unknowable, but of the fair number of US conservatives I know, cynical and otherwise, I really doubt any of them has a "straussian wink" for the constitution. Cheney et all are ultimately just conservative assholes, not supervillains from an Adam Curtis documentary, however cool that would be for our left-lib political escatology.
A USian constitutional historian, writing in Salon, reckons that when Bush acts like a king (commissar, fuhrer... insert favourite analogy here), he's only doing what a badly flawed Constitution allows him to do:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/01/presidential_power/
"The expansion of presidential power came from aggressive reading of ambiguous text -- text that was not left ambiguous by accident. A number of the framers thought that the entire "republic" business was either a mistake or at best a dangerous gamble, and that a real king would be necessary sooner rather than later. Leading this charge was Alexander Hamilton, who told the Philadelphia Convention that "as to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles" and that "the English model was the only good one on this subject." Hamilton favored an "elective monarch" who would serve for life and who would have an absolute veto on all congressional acts and "the direction of war when authorized or begun."
The text of the Constitution did not enshrine Hamilton's elected king. The document gave the president a four-year renewable term, permitted Congress to override his veto, and ambiguously divided the war power between the two branches. But Hamilton nonetheless had more to do with designing the office than did Madison or any other framer. As George Washington's secretary of the treasury, Hamilton was the creator of the "unitary executive" theory that Bush administration lawyers like to cite."