A couple weeks ago I pointed to a Capitalism Magazine piece pointing out that all of the things that Republicans hate about the Obama administration are largely mere continuations of the Bush administration’s overreach. Gene Healy, a vice-president at the Cato Institute, makes much the same point in Right helped prepare the way for Obama’s Imperial Presidency,
Over the last eight years, then-President George W. Bush repeatedly insisted that he was the sole constitutional “decider,” free from congressional or judicial checks on his power.
He claimed the power to imprison American citizens as terrorist suspects for as long as he deemed necessary, tap Americans’ phones without a warrant, and, through the use of the State Secrets privilege – -a doctrine that shields information related to national security – prevent the courts from testing the legality of those propositions.
In the last months of his administration, Bush behaved like a Roman dictator for economic affairs, deciding which companies would live or die with the $700 billion in taxpayer funds Congress had authorized the executive branch to commit.
. . .
Granted, Obama’s early moves suggested a more restrained approach to presidential power. On his second day in office, he issued orders that scaled back executive branch secrecy and committed his administration to abide by the federal laws barring torture.
Call it the “soft bigotry of low expectations” if you want, but after eight years of the Cheney Doctrine, it was oddly reassuring to hear a president admit that he wasn’t above the law.
It is bizarre to see Republicans who twisted themselves into knots to defend the indefensible in the Bush administration suddenly find that missing conservative conscience and decide that maybe the era of ever bigger government isn’t such a good thing now that their party isn’t pulling the levers of power.
