Balkinization: Bush Creates Common Ground Between Liberals and Conservatives

Bush Creates Common Ground Between Liberals and Conservatives

Brian Tamanaha

Lest anyone think that only liberals are appalled at the claims and actions of the Bush Administration, consider this passage from a recent New Yorker article (July 3, 2006) by Jane Mayer detailing the dark activities of David Addington, Cheney's Chief of Staff:

Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisors had "staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He said there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance....It's got the sense of Louis XIV: "I am the State." Richard Epstein, a prominent libertarian law professor at the University of Chicago, said, "The President doesn't have the power of a king, or even that of state governors. He's subject to the laws of Congress! The Administration's lawyers are nuts on this issue." He warned of an impending "constitutional crisis," because "their talk of the inherent power of the Presidency seems to be saying the courts can't stop them, and neither can Congress."

In an interview last week, William F. Buckley, the intellectual leader of American conservatism, made the following tart comments:

I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as an absence of effective conservative ideology--with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress, and in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge....

There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush....I think his legacy is indecipherable.

Several publications put out by the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, two respected conservative think tanks, characterize Bush Administration economic policies in terms of gross "corporate welfare." Republican Peter Peterson's book, Running on Empty, is a frightening description of our huge deficit, and its future implications, brought on by the mindless Bush Administration policy of cutting taxes for the rich. Peterson was quoted in Nation: "I'm rather offended that fat cats like me are getting tax cuts which over the longer term will only serve to increase taxes on my own children and grandchildren at a time when our entitlement programs are underfunded."

In the period leading up to the 2004 election, a number of conservatives expressed opposition to various Bush Administration policies, but most tempered their criticism. The few isolated voices then is now a chorus headed toward a crescendo. Beside oil companies and defense contractors, the one constituency that appears to remain firmly behind Bush are religious conservatives (see stem cell veto).

When liberals criticize the Bush Administration they are often dismissed by conservatives as unbalanced Bush-haters. That doesn't cut it anymore. In an extraordinary feat, the extremism of the Bush Administration appears to be creating common ground for the left and the right.

Posted 6:53 AM by Brian Tamanaha [link]