By Staff
Any President of the United States takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."
For seven years the Bush administration has taken a, how should we say it, expansive view of executive authority, challenging the authority of laws with which it disagrees.
Bypassing whatever he feels infringes on his wartime powers, Bush has expanded his right to keep information secret from Congress, imprisoned U.S. citizens without charges and employed signing statements to challenge more laws than his predecessors combined.
To say Bush is entering the eighth and final year of his presidency presumes he won't find some way around that check.
The Boston Globe has been questioning the candidates about their views on the limits of executive power.
The Globe piece is by Charlie Savage, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Bush's use of signing statements.
Savage is also the author of "Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy."
"Legal specialists say decisions by the next president – either to keep using the expanded powers Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney developed, or to abandon their legal and political precedents – will help determine whether a stronger presidency becomes permanent," Savage writes.
Major Democratic candidates all responded to the Globe, but among Republicans, only John McCain ("I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law"), Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Not Mike Huckabee. Not Fred Thompson. Imperial Mayor Rudy Giuliani replied with a general statement.
McCain, Paul, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson decried use of signing statements. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards condemned Bush's use of them, but didn't rule out using signing statements themselves.
These eight also expressed reservations about the Bush administration's broad interpretation of presidential power.
Romney, on the other hand, echoed Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in asserting, "Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive."
To a question about whether a president can use an interrogation technique Congress "prohibited under all circumstances," Romney wrote, "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."
What? The terrorists win if he goes on record stating whether he believes a president must obey the law?
Romney also stated, "The president must carry out all of his duties in a manner consistent with the rule of law, whether it is our Constitution or valid international agreements, so long as they do not impinge upon the president's constitutional authority."
Clinton, according to Savage, "embraced a stronger view of a president's power to use executive privilege to keep information secret from Congress than some rivals."
Maybe the fact that this issue doesn't fit cleanly in the media's preferred left-right balance keeps it from getting the attention it deserves, but it's important enough to resolve to ferret out for yourself where these would-be White House occupants stand on the constitutional issue of executive power.