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Noonan

Jul 21 2007, 09:01 AM

QUOTE

As long as we're going to be discussing the parameters of executive privilege in the weeks and months ahead, can we start by revisiting the now commonly accepted notion that the President can only get free and unfettered advice if those giving the advice know it will remain confidential?

Every talking head starts the discussion of executive privilege with a solemn nod to this totem. Heck, even Kevin Drum conceded this point in a post back in March:

QUOTE

The president and his immediate staff really do have a strong interest in their ability to receive candid, provocative advice, and that interest is threatened if advisors are worried that the ideas they toss around in private are likely to become public. This is an important principle regardless of who occupies the White House.

Is that really true though? Literally, Kevin is right. Presidents do have a strong interest in this principle. But the President's interest, in this instance, is not in line with the public interest. In fact, executive privilege offers the President and his advisers a perverse disincentive to look after the public interest. Isn't the prospect of public exposure of hare-brained ideas, controversial proposals, and malfeasance and misdeeds the very sort of incentive the public wants looming over the President and his advisers, a dagger of accountability?

Let's consider the kinds of things--or advisors--that Bush and Cheney have been hiding with their invocation of privilege:

* The degree to which Republican operatives can dial up the firing of a US Attorney they don't like
* The degree to which the oil companies own our energy policy (and therefore our security)
* The degree to which Bush helped Enron by postponing a sane response to the California Energy crisis
* The centrality of AEI hacks and other Neocons in building the case for the last war--and the next one
* The open access Bandar Bush bin Sultan had to the President and Vice President's office
* The degree to which big donors dictate our policies

Explain again why we, as citizens, aren't demanding these details?

rla

Jul 21 2007, 09:56 AM

QUOTE(Noonan @ Jul 21 2007, 09:01 AM)

Let the Sunshine In
by emptywheel

I'm with David Kurtz. In addition to offering good reason to begin impeachment procedures, Bush's dangerous claims to executive and deliberative privilege really ought to invite us to reconsider the notion that Presidents need to hide their deliberations.
Is that really true though? Literally, Kevin is right. Presidents do have a strong interest in this principle. But the President's interest, in this instance, is not in line with the public interest. In fact, executive privilege offers the President and his advisers a perverse disincentive to look after the public interest. Isn't the prospect of public exposure of hare-brained ideas, controversial proposals, and malfeasance and misdeeds the very sort of incentive the public wants looming over the President and his advisers, a dagger of accountability?

Let's consider the kinds of things--or advisors--that Bush and Cheney have been hiding with their invocation of privilege:

* The degree to which Republican operatives can dial up the firing of a US Attorney they don't like
* The degree to which the oil companies own our energy policy (and therefore our security)
* The degree to which Bush helped Enron by postponing a sane response to the California Energy crisis
* The centrality of AEI hacks and other Neocons in building the case for the last war--and the next one
* The open access Bandar Bush bin Sultan had to the President and Vice President's office
* The degree to which big donors dictate our policies

Explain again why we, as citizens, aren't demanding these details?

This is the kind of rights bearing attitude we need to inculcate throughout the population. We
need more reporters like this that go after the half hidden assumptions and say, "Show Me."

TheRestofUs

Jul 21 2007, 11:49 AM

The issue is earned trust. The president is given super-power because he is supposed to be the PEOPLE'S REPRESENTATIVE moreso than any other. Bush has made that concept and his "privileges" a very bad joke! The problem is that the people are not given enough factual information about those who aspire to lead us about what is in that person's heart based on what they have done in the past. Bush and his family's ties to Nazis, and the Bin ladens, and Cheney's sordid history were not vetted.

We need to tar and feather the MSM who failed us. They should have to come foward and sincerely express their "Mia Culpa". If they do not they should be shunned and scorned. But we don't live in the land of "Should". The people are also to blame. They voted for an obvious punk and a LIAR. IMO he has tarnished the "Cowboy" image for a generation at least. Also the super-rich need to be tossed from undue influence along with their "handmaidens". The President is supposed to be the representative of ALL the people, not just his corrupted Party. Bush is the poster child for the worst possible president imaginable and at the worst possible time in American History. He should be immortalized for that, and all the velvet "W" paintings hung up and worshiped by his willing victims be found on the dusbin of history along with his entire ilk.

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