E Pluribus Unum

Here's the truth...

Our Constitution and our traditions were created in such a way that we instinctively know that too much power concentrated in the hands of one single person is not a good thing. Our nation was founded in rebellion against that very happenstance. The Zogby poll respondents know that in their bones.

That said, the question remains: should the country, again, be put through the "trauma" of impeachment? Well, we wouldn't have to if Congress had been doing its job all along. But even I would have admit that this Republican Congress alone should not take all the blame, nor should it be absolved of all blame either.

Here's the solution...

The solution is to bring in a new Congress, one that is mindful of its Constitutional powers and responsibilities. We need to elect a representatives to the Legislative Branch that will exercise its checks and balances over the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch in a manner consistent with what the Framers envisioned.

More on this in a moment, but first...

Let's take a look back into history to see how we got here.

In his excellent article, Our Presidential Era, Noah Feldman points out that the concentration of power in the Executive branch is nothing new. It has taken two hundred years of gradual (or fitful) evolution towards an all-powerful Executive, something the Framers did not want.

They didn't want it because they believed that too much power in the hands of a single person was a bad thing. Can you blame them? They lived under the tyranny of the despotic King George. So they created a system of governance that contained an ingenious and practical series of checks and balances to unbridled power.

For example...

The Framers designed the system so that the Legislative branch would write the laws; the Executive would simply execute them.

But, as Feldman observes, over the decades the balance of power has shifted:

1. Thomas Jefferson implemented the purchase of the Lousiana territory without a constitutional amendment or even congressional approval.

2. Andrew Jackson shut down the national bank, claiming that he alone (and not the Legislative branch) represented the will of the people.

3. Abraham Lincoln governed without Congressional approval when he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.

4. William McKinley conquered the Philipines and ruled a nation whose people would never vote in a US election.

5. Franklin Roosevelt created (and the Congress went along with) a system of administrative departments that had broad discretion in regulating the economy.

6. And in our lifetime, during the Cold War, multiple Presidents have used the issue of national security to extend their power. This has culminated in the George Bush presidency which has presided over a massive (secret) expansion of Presidential power.

Executive branch lawyers now claim that the Constitution gives this POTUS the power to prosecute the war as he sees fit, not subject to any law against it passed by the Legislative branch or ruled on by the Judicial branch.

Furthermore, this Executive claims that adherance to international treaties ratified by the Legislative branch is not a matter of "law" but a matter of "policy," subject to the whims of the Chief Executive.

So what happened next?

We now see that Bush has arrested American citizens and held them without trial. Bush has authorized illegal wiretapping, free from any judicial and/or legislative oversight. Bush has authorized torture and extraordinary rendition. All in the name of national security.

Some of you readng this may hold out some hope that the SCOTUS will strike down this extraordinary gathering of extra-Constitutional powers. But your hopes will be dashed for two reasons:

1. The obvious reason is that, with the ascension of Roberts and Alito to the bench, it means that you now have two important proponents of a stronger Executive poised to rule on the next question that comes before the SCOTUS.

2. The second reason is that (according to Feldman) the SCOTUS was never meant to be the "umpire" between the other two branches. The Framers envisioned that the SCOTUS was a co-equal branch to the other two.

Here's what this means...

When Congress relies on the SCOTUS to rule on these difficult issues, they run the risk of ceding even more of their Constitutional powers. But this time they risk ceding them, not to the Executive branch, but the SCOTUS itself.

What can Congress do to restore the balance of power envisioned by the Framers?

Well, for one thing, they can stop being a rubber-stamp for the President. For example, it should come as no surprise that as Bush's excruciating grab for power continues, this Congress has submitted not one single bill that the President found reason to veto.

More than that, Feldman states that there are four things Congress has the power to do when they perceive that the President is overstepping his authority:

1. It can stop cooperating with the President's agenda.
   Unfortunately, with this Republican Congress, that will never happen.

2. It can shut off the money for relevant programs.
   Ditto.

3. It can conduct oversight hearings into what exactly the President is doing.
   In order for this to work (even with a Congress from the opposition party) the threat of imprisionment for lying to Congress must be plausible. Furthermore, there can be no invoking "executive privilege" (a phrase that does not appear in the Constitution). In other words, there can be no secrets between the Executive and Legislative branches.

4. It can impeach the President.

Which brings us full circle. Here's how Feldman ends his article:

"The prize of power goes to the bold." In other words, if Congress does nothing, history shows us that the President, any President, will gather more power to himself in contradiction to what the Framers envisioned.

Here's Feldman, in his own words:

No court alone can do the job of protecting liberty from the exercise of executive power. For that most important of tasks the people's elected representatives need to be actively involved.

When we let them abdicate this role, the violations start to multiply and we get the secret surveillance and classified renditions, and the unnamed torture that we all recognize as un-American.

Can the Democrats use this rationale to nationalize the midterm elections? Can they come up with a message that encapsulates this idea? The history is complex and it takes time to tell the story.

But it is our story -- the story of a people who rose up and created a system of governance which was handed UP the the governing class who were meant to be "public servants."

It was the first time in history that government of the people was created by the people and for the people.

Are we good enough to preserve that? Or will our generation's legacy be that we gave it up to one man, in return for his promise to "protect us from evil-doers?"

This is our time to find out. Future generations will look back at us with either with pride or with revulsion.

What will we do next?