Just What the Founders Feared

Pretty much everyone in America agrees on one thing and that is that we are in sad shape. As a matter of fact pretty much everyone in the world feels the same way. Unfortunate as it is, we appear to be stuck with the miserable failure for a while longer and the fact that only about a quarter of the population approves of either Bush or the direction of the country is surely material.

The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn't have the power to do it. "I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war," he said at a recent press conference. "I think they ought to be funding the troops." He added magnanimously: "I’m certainly interested in their opinion."

Isn't it nice that Bush would stoop to allow others their an opinion regardless of whether he would ever be compelled to act on anything not mandated by Dick Cheney.

While I am usually disgusted by the coverage of Bush and Cheney in the MSM I was happily surprised by an editorial by Adam Cohen in Monday's NY Times . The title of the editorial is "Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes To War". It is a very refreshing thing to read in the 'paper of record'. (free registration required)

But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.

This is the kind of writing we should have been seeing all the while. The tenor of the Time's opinion is quite striking and there are no punches pulled. I actually read the article twice, it was such a pleasure and if you haven't I am sure you will find it so as well.

Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

If, as they say, the pen is mightier than this sword, then a few more articles like this might change a few additional minds in the Senate and we can begin to dismantle this imperial presidency.