The Imperial Presidency and the Lessons of History

My mother's side of the family were strong FDR Democrats. My grandfather worked in the Roosevelt Administration, directly under Jim Farley (a close political adviser to FDR and Chair of the DNC from 1932-1940). That said, I think that partisanship must always yield to history: we can fairly trace the beginnings of the Imperial Presidency to FDR's door.

To his credit, FDR himself recognized the dangers that his strengthening of Executive power posed to American aspirations towards democracy:

"We have built up new instruments of public power," he wrote. "In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people" (FDR, Public Papers, V, 16).

Since FDR, the political puppets of this country's economic autocracy have been both Democrats and Republicans (what I term Democan-Republicrats). The so-called Reagan Revolution of the 1980's accelerated the conversion of the two party system into a monoparty of plutocratic political puppetry with conservative (the Republican "party") and liberal (the Democratic "party") wings.

This process was somewhat moderated during the tenures of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton--but it would be a mistake to think that, under the Democratic leadership of Clinton, this process was in any way "rolled-back." It was, in fact, advanced (Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law, for example).

Eight years of Bush-Cheney put the pedal to the metal. The Bush-Cheney regime was composed of Rightist radicals (neo-Fascists, in my book) who actually "auctioned off" responsibilities of the Federal Government to private corporations (Halliburton, Blackwater)--thereby transferring significant rights heretofore Constitutionally vouchsafed the American people to the management of for-profit business concerns.

The legacy of the rule of Bush-Cheney is, in my view, a radical, right-wing outrage perpetrated against the American people. I am tempted to call it a "coup," but I think it more accurate to regard it as the second accelerating phase of Reaganism.

The seeds of this outrage were planted, however, by our beloved FDR.

The responsibility for destroying the poisonous vines that have grown from FDR's planting have fallen to our equally beloved Barack Obama.

Barack "mistakes were made but let's look forward not back" Obama.

You see, this is the problem. As George Santayana rightly observed: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

By steadfastly refusing to learn from history President Obama is doomed to repeat it and, in repeating it, he becomes complicit with those who have mounted a sustained assault on American democracy.

Since Obama's election last November, the grass-roots "people's movement" that helped him to achieve his victory has lost its place: it no longer plays the role in national politics that it did during the campaign. Instead, Obama receives counsel from his "team of rivals." If that "team" is advising the President to ignore the lessons of history, then that team "rivals" our democratic aspirations as a people.

Advised by democracy's rivals or not, the buck stops with Barack Obama.

In the present circumstances, gentle, liberal, ameliorating measures will not be sufficient to reverse the legacy of the radical, right-wing outrages perpetrated against the American people--and, indeed, against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as against those kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured by agents of the U.S. government in its "War on [read: of] Terror" over the past decade.

What is needed are radical, left-wing, counter-measures specifically designed to address the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Cheney neo-Fascistic tilt of the Imperial Presidency. We need to reverse course.

And once the leftist correction of the Imperial Presidency has proved effective, i.e., once what FDR called a "people's government" has been effectively installed in our nation's capitol, then the final act of the Imperial Presidency can be one thing and one thing only: its self-dismantling. I know it's a lot to ask--of anyone but a true patriot.

Personally, I would like to see a Constitutional convention called and a 21st century document drafted that would place the power of the national government more squarely in the hands of the American people. A multi-party parliamentary social democracy that makes broad use of public referenda would be my preference, but I'm open to other possibilities.

The bottom line for me is that the American experiment in government of, by, and for the people should be renewed--and to do that, we need more than a slight tweak here and a gentle nudge there. We need major re-constructive surgery performed on the body politic and its instruments of government.

The American people must come to recognize the historical moment that they currently occupy and, in the process, admit to themselves that the installation of Barack Hussein Obama upon the throne of the Imperial Presidency will not produce the real change for which they hunger. Chump change is all they can realistically expect. And, at this historical moment, chump change just does not pay the bill.