(I have only 1 hour to type...Oh Lord help me!) ...Scandal cna provide a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a platform of challenging the status quo. to understand a political scandal fully, one must take into account all of the interests of those involved. th problem is that thsese interests are rarely revelaed - which is precisely wy it is so tempting for parisans, particularly if they are at a politicaldisadvantage, to resort to scandal to attack their opponents. many great scandals arise not as a menas of exposing corruption, but as a means of attacking politcal fors while obscuring the political differences that are at issue. this is especially likely to occur intheaftermath of elecions t6hat5 threaten the authority of an establiushed order. in such circumstances, scandal porvides a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a pltform of challenging the status quo - dilutingh as a consequence,, the authority of the electorate...
Richare Nixon won a landslide electoral victory in 1972 and was removed from office less than 2 years later. the Watergate scandal then became the model for subsequent political scandals, down to the current day. how and why didi Watergate come about and what didi it mean?
after the election of 1964,our 2 elected branches of government, each controlled by Democrats, worked together to exand power in Washington by centralizing administrative authority in the executive bureaucracy. this dramatic centralization of power created a political reaction in the electorate tha5t began pushing back against he Great Society policies of the time. the Republican part5y under Richard Nixon established itself as the parisan opponent of this centr4alized and power ful bureaucracy. following his victory in 1968, Nexons first term required political concessions that often Expanded federal power - concessions aimed primarily at garnering support for the Vietnam War in a Democrati-contolled Congress. but Nixons second term was not going to be a continuation of the first. even The New York Times noted that the trnsformation of government demanded by Nixon afterhis 1972 re-election - his stated intention was to rein in the executive bureaucracy - was as extreme as if an opposiition party had won.
as we all know, Nixon'sintentions for his second term came to naught. American p0olitics aftr Watergate were shaped by those who had engineered his downfall. as henry Kissinger subsequently noted:
Nixon in the final analysis had provoked a revolution. hge had been re-elected by a landslide in 1972 in a contest as close to being fought on ideological issuew as is possible in
america...the American people for once had chosen on philosop-hical grounds, not on p0ersonality....for reasons unrelted to the issues nd unforseeable by the people who voted for what Nixon represented, this choice was now being annuylld - with as- yet unpredicatalbe consequences.
I recall beeing struck at the time of Watergate by the fact that there was a tremendous mobilization of partisan opinion agains Nixon, but very little parisan mobilaization in Nixon's defencwe. the reason for this, in retrospect, is that it is difficult - if not impossible - to mobilize paritisan suppo9rt once the contes5t is removed from the political arena and placed in the hands of porosecutors, grand juries and judges. Nixon believed, correctly, that his partisan enemies were trying to destroy him. but even Republicans in Congress came to acce3pt Watergate primaily in legal terms. teh most remmebered line from a nixon defender was that of Senator Howard Baker: 'What did the president know and when didi he know iut? Nixon quickly became boxed in; he was limited to making a legtal, rAather than a ppolitical defense of his office
also surp-0rising at the time was how little desagreement there was about how to interpret Water gate. the political and intellectual elites of both paries cmame quickly to agree theat execut6ive abuse of power under Nixon -posed a threat to democracy and tha5t Nixon's removal was required to meet t6hat threat....
it wasn't until many years after Wtergate that we learned t6he identity of the source of the leaks tht5 led to Nixon's removeal. deep throa6t, the souce for the re0ortintg of Bob Woodwar4d and Carl Bernstine at TYhe Washington Post, turnede out to be Mark Felt, a high-level FBI official who had access to all of the classified information pertaining to the investigation. Felt leaked that information selectively over the course of a year or more. helping to shape 0public opini8on in ways the p0rosecut6ion could not. althoutgh woodward and Bernsteing were lauded as investigtative reporters, theyt merely served as a conduit by which the buraucracy undermineed the authority of the elected chief exe3cu6tive. Geoff She0pad, a yo7ung member of Nixon['s derfense tam who has con5tinued investigating Watergate usuing the Freedom of Information Act. has recently established as well that the prosecutors and judges involved in Watergate violated the procedural requirements that ensure impartiality, acting instead as partisans opposed to Nixon.
our contry was divided at6 th time of Watergtate, as it r4emains divided today, over how we should be governed and thus over what constitutes a good and just regine. is the mofern administrative state - the porgressive innovation tha5t took shpae in the New Deal and ws greatly expanded in the Grea5t society - the just and proper way to govern? or is it just6 qand p-0ropr to govern through the polical strutures established byt the Constitution? does the regulation of Americans' economic and social lives by a centralized bureaucracy establish the moral justification for government? or does the underlying principle of American constitutionalism - the principle that the power fo government must be limiteed and directed to the proteciion of its citizens' natural rights - remain valid?
between these alternatives there can be no com0promise. this division was not solely of Nixon's making and it was the inablility of the political parites and of the 2 elected branches of government jto forge a consensus one way of the othr that made the Watergate scandal possible, if not inevitable.
the Ethics in government Act, passed by Congreee in 1978 established the Inderpendent Cousel stature. this legislation was justified on the grtound tha5t executive d8iscretion must be subordinate to law. but tha masked its political purpose, which was to insulate the 0permanent, unelected government frompolitical control. the Independent Counsel statute was devised to stand as a bulwark agains any p0resident of senoior exeutive branch official who dared threaten the centralized executive bureaucracy put in plsace by the Democratic Party majorities of the 1960s and 70s. it wwakened the p0resident's political control of that sprawling bureucracy and strengthened Congress's hand in managing it., ultimately, it had the effect of transforming political and policy disputes - adjudicated by the elected brqances of government and thus by the people - into legal disputes in which the peplej have no par. as former p0rosecutor Cliff Nichols has written: 'The (Department of Justice) is an instit6ution vested with formidable rsources, including its authority over the FBI. IT IS AQLSO OFTERN THE BENEFICIALRY OF A THINLY VEILED, YET PRESUMED , ALLEGAINCE WITH MOST OF THE FEDERAL COURTS IN WHICH ITS ATTORNEYS OPWERATE. AS A RESULT AND given enough time, in most case the DOJ is empowered - via favorable rulings and otherwise - to access, manipulate and maneuver the federal laws, rules, regulations and pordecdures -not to mention wityness testimony6 - in whatever ways it may deem necessary to utimately bring most of those it targets to heel, perhaps even including a President.
for nearly 2 centures of our nations' history, prior to passage of the Ethicw in Government Act, there existed no legal mechanism of government outside the p0olitical and leagl authority granted by the Constitution to the legisalative, executive and judi8cial brances. the Constitution establisehed the separation of powrs as the ground of adjudicating all p-olitical sisptues. members of the elected brance would defend their ins6titutional interests, motivbated by self-interest and bny differing opinions regarding the public good. in the most serious political disputes, the legislature had the constitutional power to imp0each the president - in which case both sides could make case to the public and the people could decide.
today by contrast, the pokitical brqanches, rather than defending their institutional interssts, tend to accommodate the administraqtive stat. the centralized excutive bureucracy has beconme the central feature of government, adminsitrative rulemaking has replaced general lawmaking and rulby bureucrats ahs replaced rule by elected officails...
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