L'Etat C'est la Maison Blanche

Jesse Walker | September 7, 2007

An excerpt from The Terror Presidency, former Office of Legal Counsel chief Jack Goldsmith's tell-all about life inside the Bush administration:

[Dick Cheney's lawyer David] Addington once expressed his general attitude toward accommodation when he said, "We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop." He and, I presumed, his boss viewed power as the absence of constraint. These men believed that the president would be best equipped to identify and defeat the uncertain, shifting, and lethal new enemy by eliminating all hurdles to the exercise of his power. They had no sense of trading constraint for power. It seemed never to occur to them that it might be possible to increase the president's strength and effectiveness by accepting small limits on his prerogatives in order to secure more significant support from Congress, the courts, or allies. They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness and emboldened the enemies of America and the executive branch. When it came to terrorism, they viewed every encounter outside the innermost core of most trusted advisers as a zero-sum game that if they didn't win they would necessarily lose.

I love that phrase: "the enemies of America and the executive branch." Reminds me of a report filed by a cop sent to monitor Lenny Bruce's nightclub act: He said Bruce had mocked "religion, God, and the police in general."

[Via Justin Logan.]

Comments

|9.7.07 @ 11:31AM|#

the enemies of America and the executive branch

At least they seem to be making a tacit admission that they are not one and the same. I guess the subtext is for now.

|9.7.07 @ 11:32AM|#

The way this excerpt is phrased, you'd think that Bush didn't have any power using his techniques.

SPD|9.7.07 @ 11:33AM|#

Is there any way we can force Washington, D.C. to secede from the Union?

|9.7.07 @ 11:36AM|#

Sounds like Napoleonic methods of accumulating power rather than those of a wise politician.

The quote goes on to illustrate how short term the thinking is at just about every level in the administration.

Dovetails nicely with an NPR story yesterday about how Condoleeza Rice is hampered as Secretary of State by decisions she made as National Security Advisor.

|9.7.07 @ 11:52AM|#

Oh, the 1990's. I remember disliking Bill Clinton because of his abuses of power. What a difference a decade makes in your perception of things...

|9.7.07 @ 12:06PM|#

Remember when expressing thoughts like that was widely dismissed as a mental disorder, Bush Derangement Syndrome?

To think that their supporters put forward character as Bush and Cheney's greatest strength. This isn't just an expression of political philosophy.

|9.7.07 @ 12:12PM|#

I am beginning to expect that there is something in the genetics of those we elect to office that causes them to lose their effing minds once they get hold of the levers of power in government. Clinton was a crazy too, but looking at our current choices for the next year we may end up looking back fondly on Bush especially if Ghouliani or Clinton II is elected.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. George Washington

|9.7.07 @ 12:19PM|#

The funniest thing about all this (typical of the short-term thinking I mentioned in my previous post) is that noone in the Republican administration or the Republican Congress or Senate bothered to consider that a Democrat would someday become president and want to assert power using the same justification.

What a bunch of maroons.

|9.7.07 @ 12:26PM|#

Ain't that the truth. Rove was blowing so much smoke up Republican asses that they didn't bother to think what if a Democrat gains a hold of the so called "unitary" executives powers. Not that there is really an ounce of difference between them. Big Government Republican or Big Government Democrat what a choice.

|9.7.07 @ 12:39PM|#

[Dick Cheney's lawyer David] Addington once expressed his general attitude toward accommodation when he said, "We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop." He and, I presumed, his boss viewed power as the absence of constraint.

Wow, Dick Cheney's lawyer said that? What did his dentist say. I'm sure his barber has some good insight into the decisions in Iraq.

I'm no fan of the Bush admin. But who cares what someone's lawyer thinks. And to "persume" his boss just thinks the same thing isn't exactly rational. Were I to have a lawyer on retainer I doubt he and I would have similiar views on politics.

|9.7.07 @ 12:45PM|#

Is it bad that when I started reading this excerpt that my initial thought was "Isn't Dick Cheyney dead?"

|9.7.07 @ 12:46PM|#

*Dick Cheney*

|9.7.07 @ 12:53PM|#

David Addington has been a Senior Counsellor to the Vice President for the entirety of the administration, and was appointed his Chief of Staff after the last one had to resign because of his indictment, Pain.

We're not talking about some guy in private practice who Cheney hired to fix his speeding tickets in Wyoming.

|9.7.07 @ 1:02PM|#

"David Addington has been a Senior Counsellor to the Vice President"

I wondered where he'd wind up after 'Moonlighting' was cancelled.

Adam W.|9.7.07 @ 1:16PM|#

Pain: Adding to what Joe said, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Addington#Vice_President.27s_office

He has much influence apparently.

|9.7.07 @ 1:18PM|#

Clinton was a crazy too, but looking at our current choices for the next year we may end up looking back fondly on Bush especially if Ghouliani or Clinton II is elected.


I got to ask -- compared to Bush, what did Bill Clinton do that was so bad? Compared to Bush, what do you think Hillary Clinton is going to do that's worse?

I can understand Guiliani -- he seems to be running on the "I'll be Bush, but even harder" platform so you can reasonably expect more of the same, although without the "God told me to" part of it.

|9.7.07 @ 1:57PM|#

I love that phrase: "the enemies of America and the executive branch." Reminds me of a report...

Reminds me of Richard Nixon and his Enemies List.

|9.7.07 @ 2:07PM|#

Remember when expressing thoughts like that was widely dismissed as a mental disorder, Bush Derangement Syndrome?

That is a strange malady, which I have seen in the real world. It makes people lose all rationality. A friend of mine, at a dinner party, saw a clip of Bush on television out the corner of his eye, and he launched into an uncontrollable stream of extreme blue language, silencing the whole party. He went off the deep end, advocating the immediate murder of all registered Republicans. Just because he saw a picture of Bush. It reminded me of rabies.

If Bush helped an old lady across a busy street, many Democrats would instinctively decry it as an evil act of denying cab drivers the opportunity to control the population.

BDS is fortunately receding, Unfortunately, many Republicans are coming down with the opposite malady, BWS, Bush Worshipping Syndrome, the irrational belief that Bush cannot do any wrong. If Bush ran over an old lady in a cab, many Republicans would instinctively praise it as a courageous example of population control.

There just doesn't seem to be any in-between with Bush. You either hate him from the bottom of your gut, or you think he's the second coming.

|9.7.07 @ 2:15PM|#

There just doesn't seem to be any in-between with Bush. You either hate him from the bottom of your gut, or you think he's the second coming.

I'm more concerned that he, himself, might think he's the second coming.

Mike Laursen|9.7.07 @ 2:21PM|#

At least they seem to be making a tacit admission that they are not one and the same.

And at least they listed America first.

|9.7.07 @ 2:50PM|#

I don't think Bush Derangement Syndrome has budged.

I just think a lot of Republicans have realized that it was vastly over-diagnosed.

me|9.7.07 @ 3:02PM|#

The phrase: "the enemies of America and the executive branch." would seeming damning to me if it had been said by a member of the administrator, and not the writer of a book criticizing the administration.

JBinMO|9.7.07 @ 3:13PM|#

"the enemies of America and the executive branch"

Redundant?

Jesse Walker|9.7.07 @ 3:18PM|#

The phrase: "the enemies of America and the executive branch." would seeming damning to me if it had been said by a member of the administrator, and not the writer of a book criticizing the administration.

A reasonable point, even allowing for the fact that the writer in question was a member of the administration. So don't mistake it for something it's not.

|9.7.07 @ 4:56PM|#

Extremism in the defense of power is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of security is no virtue.

Or something like that.