Just Ask The Godamn Question!

Various leftwing A-Listers are today getting all heated up over Kevin Drum's recent wish for more wonkery over policy rather than a concentration on the two subjects that mainly heat up the lefty netroots - Bush' military adventurism and his administration's "almost criminal" incompetence and corruption. Kevin wrote:

Frankly, I wish lefty bloggers did care more about fighting over policy issues. Not only is it a healthy argument to have, but it would give us something to coalesce around if we win back Congress in November. As things stand now, though, I have a feeling that if we win in November the netroots won't really have a very good idea of what it wants to accomplish, and will therefore default immediately to the longtime favorite game of liberals everywhere: the circular firing squad.

Which prompted Matt Stoller at MyDD to respond:

Now, I do want things from Congress...But I'm not going to pretend like any of these are feasible without working out the systemic rot that has infected our discourse and political system. I want to see the law be reestablished as law, policy battles return to good faith terrain, and facts established as the basis for policy-making - and then we can discuss policy.

And Atrios, more revealingly still, to add the following to a fairly basic liberal list of policy wants:

...adding a few more things which would be obvious if we weren't living in the Grand and Glorious Age of Bush:
- Torture is bad
- Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
- Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
- Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
- Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time "just because" is bad [Emphasis Mine - C]

Kevin quotes Atrios list of policies in a later post but leaves the bit I've quoted out, calling the first part the "serious" bit.

All three are, without a shade of a doubt, Democrat partisans - no matter how critical each may have been of individual party actions, policies or figures they still support the party and want it to win. Therein lies the mistake I wish they would all realise they are making, one of wearing rose-colored glasses.

As it stands at the moment no-one is justified in having any confidence whatsoever that the Dem's prime candidates for the Oval Office would do anything other than use Bush's years of turning the presidency into an elected monarchy as anything more than a useful precedent. Every single one of these A-Listers has written in the past on the shortcomings of most of that list of possible candidates and in every case found them wanting on issues too closely related to the urge for personal power for comfort. Those candidates may well support a progressive agenda but if they keep to the accelerating "President as Monarch" course which began with Reagan's institution of signing statements and continued through the next three Presidents (one a Democrat) then - a benevolent and elected dictatorship is still a dictatorship and it isn't what America is supposed to be about.

(That isn't to say the Republican shortlist is any better, though. It is far, far worse.)

So just blindly assuming, as all three do, that a Dem contolled Hill will rollback Bush's excesses or that a Dem in the White House will do so is naivete at best and foolhardy blind partisan optimism at worst. And this nation, its people, cannot take the chance on blind optimism.

Drum, Stoller and Black - and every other person who can find a voice - should be calling long and loud for public figures to condemn the "President as Monarch" and to promise, as part of their election platform, to rollback that course.

Just ask the question: "Will you, if elected, work to limit the power of the Executive to bypass Congress and the law of the land?" Yes or no...we need to know, not just assume we know the answer.

A good beginning would be for Democrats to announce as policy that if they win the Hill they will immediately provide for a bill banning signing statements. The Founders thought the veto was enough and so it should be. Let Bush veto the bill if he dared - it would show his true colors to the world.

Then let's put every Presidential candidate on the spot - from any party - and challenge them to announce that they would support such a bill and would abide by it - even launch it themselves if need be - should they ever sit behind that big desk in the Oval Office.