On the Mootness of Legislators

Blog friend T. Greer sends a link to George Will's column Making Congress Moot. The column is unsurprisingly well crafted and reminds me why I appreciate Will in spite of his Conventional Wisdomness. Will rubs salt in the wounds opened by Gene Healy's book.

If TARP funds can be put to any use the executive branch fancies because TARP actually is a blank check for that branch, then the only reason no rules are being broken is that there are no rules.

In spite of the dubious merit of bailing out the Detroit Buggy Whip industry and its deeply flawed business model, Will is dead on that the arrogation of power to the Executive is complete. Purse strings for policy are clearly to be controlled by the House of Representatives. Yet, when Congress demurred, the Bush Administration took the money out its AIG Widow's and Orphan's fund.

TG sends the link, an excerpt, an incendiary quote form his CNN interview, and a link to my I [Heart] W post, asking "Why was it again, that you can love this guy?"

Well, the post linked was about personal virtue, which I feel our current President has in spades. I would say the same about President GHW Bush, with whom I had even more policy disagreements. President (GW) Bush's capacity to take the heat and do the right thing are worthy of admiration. And, as my post said, I think will be sorely missed.

Will's point of Executive power expansion is a fair cop. Unlike Healy, and Reason Magazine, I have a difficult time blaming President Bush for this. This is a structural, systemic flaw in the Constitution as we practice it. I don't know how to fix it, but don't expect Bush to be the guy fighting clean on Pro Wrestling. The game is fixed and Rove/Bush had a way to play it.

I'll provide one example. My hero, President Coolidge’s response to the 1927 flood of Louisiana earned him a line in a Randy Newman song.

President Coolidge come down on a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note pad in his hand
President say "Little fat man, ain't it a shame?
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land?"

That was Coolidge's Katrina. President Bush went in with an army of FEMA agents and, well an Army, and -- because he was two days late -- his administration was deemed incompetent. I say that he never recovered. War is always unpopular and he was destined to lose support in Iraq. But Katrina removed the perception of competence and left all policy subject to criticism.

What would Kanye West have thought if Bush had pulled a Coolidge? He would have been impeached! It's well and good for Healy and Will and Reason and even my great friend TG to complain about The Imperial Bush Presidency, but the people demand it. They gave a landslide victory to a successor who promised even more involvement in the markets.

I'm enjoying Jon Meacham's "American Lion" biography of President Jackson. Though we recovered from Jackson and Lincoln, it is interesting to watch early expansion of Executive Power -- and twice as interesting to see how it is considered heroic by the historians.

Individual parts of Bush policy have been debated around here. And I come to the end of the second term less enthused than ever about "big government conservatism." Again, I won't call it treason. It was an experiment: give the people the government they want (look at the polls, they do want it) but build it on market mechanisms like HSAs and private Part D administration.

I'll listen to intelligent criticism from the right or left, but I cannot look back and wish that we had elected President Gore or Kerry.

As I type this, another blog friend sends me ammo. Ed Gillespie's Myths and Facts About the Real Bush Record. Well worth a read in full, though it targets typical left criticism, I find myself drowning in contempt from the right.

I worked pretty hard to elect Governor Bush in 2000 and harder to re-elect President Bush in 2004. There have been disappointments, but I am not regretting those efforts. Yes, he has flaws. No, he does not represent all my beliefs. He was the best electable candidate in 2000 and 2004 and I will not abandon him at the end.

Politics Posted by John Kranz at December 22, 2008 11:20 AM