l:href='#ch4_75' type='note'>[75] Addington is a paradigm authoritarian, instrumental in gathering the team of lawyers who prepared legal opinions for the Department of Justice authorizing American interrogators to engage in torture. Addington teamed up with John Yoo, a law professor who clerked for the most far-right members of the federal judiciary—first Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—and who had never met a presidential power that Article II of the Constitution excluded. Together they worked on figuring out how to get around criminal laws that prohibit torture and electronic surveillances of Americans. In doing so they have offered highly specious arguments that start with the end result they seek and twist the law to fit the conclusion they want to reach. Not surprisingly, they have horrified the intellectually honest legal minds of other conservative Bush lawyers, like former deputy attorney general James Comey, who got out of the Justice Department, it appears, as quickly as he could. And former assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith left Justice when he had had enough of Addington’s power tantrums.[76]
Addington, who was in his early teens during Vietnam and Watergate, reportedly shares the view of his boss that “the executive branch was pitifully weakened by the backlash” to these events.[77] One has to wonder about Cheney and Addington’s motives in seeking to restore the presidency to what they believe to be its pre–Vietnam and Watergate backlash days. Are these men unaware of why Congress clamped down on presidents’ spying on Americans? Have they not read the transcripts of Richard Nixon pounding on his desk to demand a break-in at the Brookings Institution because he wanted documents he believed to be in their vault? Could they be unaware of the record of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI when it had unfettered powers? Why, if the powers of the presidency are wanting, do they not go to Congress and lay out what they need, rather than violating the law to see if they can get away with it? Do they not realize they are calling for—and are busy implementing—an authoritarian presidency, unchecked by the Congress or the courts? Have they forgotten that the underlying ideal of our democracy is the rule of law—not rule by presidential whim? It is still not clear how far these men want to take their authoritarianism, but I cannot find any examples of authoritarians leading any government where the governed wanted to go.
If George Bush had not selected Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000, and if the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington had not occurred in 2001, authoritarian conservatism could not have surfaced in the executive branch with its current ferocious sense of purpose. When a president embraces a concept, though, it gains legitimacy throughout the federal establishment, as political appointees—those several thousand men and women who serve at the pleasure of the president, head up various departments and agencies, or work on the White House staff—follow their leader. Depending on the president (or, in the case of the current administration, the vice president), varying degrees of dissent are tolerated in the decision-making process, but once policy is set, political appointees are expected to carry it out or leave. This is what happens within an authoritarian government. For example, when Jack Goldsmith (now on the faculty of Harvard Law School) disagreed with the authoritarian policies being issued by the White House—policies calling for the use of torture and directing the National Security Agency to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by not seeking warrants for electronic surveillance of Americans—he became a marked man. Goldsmith left the Justice Department, as have other high-level attorneys who wanted no part of the administration’s disregard for the rule of law.[78]
As Bush proceeds with his second term, we have had some six years to observe him. It is abundantly clear that he is a mental lightweight with a strong right-wing authoritarian personality, with some social dominance tendencies as well. Bush’s leading authorities are “his gut,” his God, and his vice president. Cheney, it appears, knows how to manipulate the president like a puppet, and handles his oversized ego by making him believe ideas or decisions are his own when, in fact, they are Cheney’s. While Bush does not appear to be a Double High, the vice president is a classic Double High, including—among other things—by his “go fuck yourself” dismissal of those with whom he disagrees.[79] Cheney is the mind of this presidency, with Bush its salesman. Bush simply does not have the mental facility or inclination for serious critical analysis of the policies he is being pushed to adopt.
Bush and Cheney saw 9/11 as an excuse to indulge their natural authoritarian and conservative instincts. In so doing, they have brought out the worst in conservatism: They have justified and rationalized their increasing use of authoritarian tactics in the name of fighting terrorism. Without terrorism, George W. Bush would have likely been a one-term president; with terrorism as a raison d’etre, Bush and Cheney’s authoritarianism has not been questioned seriously enough.
Many of the activities carried out as a result of Bush and Cheney’s authoritarianism have been labeled “radical.”[*] A partial list of synonyms for “radical” includes “extremist,” “fanatical,” “far-out,” “immoderate,” “intransigent,” “militant,” “nihilistic,” “revolutionary,” “uncompromising,” and even “lawless.”[80] Radicals are those “favoring or effecting extreme or revolutionary changes”; those “favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms”; persons “who hold or follow strong convictions or extreme principles; extremists”; and persons “who advocate fundamental political, economic, and social reforms by direct and often uncompromising methods.”[81] The mainstream foreign press was the first to take note of the fact that the Bush administration was not in the least following a conservative agenda. For example, the
However, journalist-turned-blogger Joshua Marshall has a remarkable ability to be among the first to spot developments in Washington, as he did in identifying the authoritarianism of the Bush administration. In analyzing a speech by Al Gore on January 16, 2006,[82] addressing the Bush administration’s remarkable abuses of power, Marshall wrote, “The point Gore makes in his speech that I think is most key is the connection between authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence. The president’s critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it’s often treated as, well…he’s power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are
Among the most troubling of the authoritarian and radical tactics being employed by Bush and Cheney are their politics of fear. A favorite gambit of Latin American dictators who run sham democracies, fearmongering has generally been frowned upon in American politics.[*] Think of the modern presidents who have governed our nation—Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton—and the various crises they confronted—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean war, the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, Iran’s taking of American hostages, the danger to American students in Grenada, Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, the terrorist bombings at the World Trade Center in 1993, and Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma. None of these presidents resorted to fear in dealing with these situations. None of these presidents made the use of fear a standard procedure or a means of governing (or pursuing office or political goals). To the contrary, all of these presidents sought to
Frightening Americans, nonetheless, has become a standard ploy for Bush, Cheney, and their surrogates.
