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The prison sentence of an assistant to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is commuted by the president after he was convicted of lying to FBI agents and of perjury and obstruction of justice during a grand jury investigation of the “leaking” of the identity of an under-cover CIA agent.
Under instruction from their bosses, several appointees of the administration refuse to testify before congressional committees, and the vice president’s office refuses to give them information about who was consulted on environmental issues.
An attorney general claims that he can’t remember information that congressional committees request in order to establish whether political considerations led to the firing of nine federal prosecutors.
President Bush’s administration holds “enemy combatants” in an offshore prison camp for years, with very limited access to legal counsel, and without charging them with an offense, thereby denying them the right of habeas corpus.
The president signs most of the legislation that Congress passes, but pens qualifiers that indicate he intends to implement only parts of the new laws and not carry out the parts of them that he disagrees with.
These and other executive actions have increased the power of the presidency to unprecedented levels, and reduced the power of the legislative and judicial branches of our federal government in comparison. The reign of George W. Bush has been called the “imperial presidency.”
Supporters of the Bush administration defend these developments as measures necessary to combat terrorists. Opponents decry the infringement of civil rights and what they consider a usurping of legislative and judicial powers.
The framers wrote into the American constitution a procedure for removing officials who have, as Alexander Hamilton put it, “abused or violated the public trust.” It is popularly know as impeachment. Actually impeachment consists of two steps. The first is impeachment in the proper sense, in which the House of Representatives decides whether there is enough evidence to charge the official and put him or her on trial. If the House impeaches the office holder, the Senate conducts a trial and determines whether the official is guilty of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” A determination of guilt results in removal from office. Impeachment was intended to guarantee that we will be governed by laws, not by the power of men.
In our history, two presidents — Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — were impeached, but neither of them were convicted or removed from office. President Richard Nixon almost certainly would have been impeached and probably would have been convicted and removed from office, had he not resigned first.
Since the impeachment of the president or vice president could result in the reversal of a decision that voters have made in an election, it must be regarded as a very serious matter, undertaken only under dire circumstances and for very important reasons.
In the present case, the dire circumstances are the predominance of power that the administrative branch of our federal government has acquired, relative to the power of the legislative and judicial branches. And the important reason is the need for a national debate on whether the security risks posed by terrorists justify this shifting of power, and the abridgement of our civil rights that is occurring.
The framers of our constitution envisioned a system of government with three separate branches — the legislative, executive and judicial. The legislative branch was given the power to make laws; the executive to carry the laws out, and the judicial to interpret the laws when there were disputes.
The framers not only wanted the three branches to be coequal in power, but also check each other, and balance each other’s power.
Critics of the present administration argue that the executive branch has acquired too much power — so much that it is no longer effectively checked by the other two branches, and in balance with them. They believe that the current president and vice president have not carried out their oath of office — to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of their ability.
The voters will not have another opportunity to affirm their confidence in the Bush-Cheney administration. The 22nd Amendment prohibits the current president and vice president from being elected to another term. But the issues of executive privilege and administrative power go beyond the practices of the present office holders. Seeing that the administration of Bush and Cheney successfully acquired new powers that none of its predecessors held, future presidents and vice presidents, be they Republican or Democrat, may be tempted to extend executive power even further. And that is why it is important at this time to hold a national discussion on what powers the different branches of federal government should have.
Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, where proceedings would be initiated, has said that impeachment is “off the table.” Her reluctance is probably based on a political calculation that an effort to impeach the president would hurt Democratic office seekers in the next election. Growing voter disapproval of the proceedings involving the Clinton impeachment probably contributed to its failure to remove him from office.
But in the absence of a serious national discussion of the limits of executive power, the continuation of our republican form of government may be threatened. We owe it to ourselves and our founding fathers to have that discussion.
Stewart Shaw is a former Winona State University registrar who is getting a second education in retirement. He also volunteers for several local organizations.
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