Bad News:Our System of Government is Consensual

I have recently come to a very disturbing realization: Our system of government is consensual and unbalanced. This flaw has been discovered by some very clever people and, if uncheckd, will have terrible consequences for every American.

I came to this conclusion just a couple of weeks ago. I was pondering a tactic that Karl Rove and the Bush Administration have used so effectively to get away with just about everything. It's very simple and we all know about it from our years on the elementary school playground. It's called, "I double-dog dare you!" No matter how many times Congressional committees issue requests for Administration underlings to testify, they will refuse, invoking the Bush Administration's extravegant interpretation of executive privilege based on their novel doctrine of the Unitary Executive. (Simply put, all who serve in the Executive Branch are simply instruments of the President's power and, therefore, are protected by his freedom from Congress' oversight.)

Sometimes, when Executive underlings refuse to testify, Congressional committees issue subpoenas to compel testimony, but the underlings will again refuse. The subtext in all this is, "Make me!"

Then Congress must get the federal courts involved, triggering what is widely (and erroneously) consider a "Constitutional crisis." Few in office have the stomach for that, but if they did take the matter to federal court, the process would be torturous and slow thanks to this Administration's amazing ability to game the system.

What's left? Only the nuclear option of impeachment. And Nancy Pelosi has taken that option off the table. She understands all of this. She made her decision for purely political reasons, a fact that she tries to obscure by saying, "Well, if someone would demonstrate that the President has committed a crime, that would be a different story!" This is, of course, utter hogwash. She knows that impeachment does not require a crime; if it did, then Presidents could be as creative as they wished in wrecking havoc, always a step ahead of Congress' efforts to pass new laws to prohibit the latest Presidential abuse of power. Pelosi knows that "high crimes and misdemeanors" do not strictly refer to laws already on the books--it refers to a subversion of the government and of the Constitution. George Bush and Dick Cheney have done that in spades.

The simple fact of the matter is that if Congress fails to act against an over-reaching Executive, the Exec wins. Congress can expand its own power only by passing laws by a veto-proof majority and then, when the President refuses to enforce those laws (as by Bush's novel use of 'signing statements') Congress must go through a long and seldom trodden legal path to compel enforcement. Failing that, once again, Congress has only impeachment.

The sad conclusion is this: Our system of government is consensual. It is also unbalanced. If the Exec oversteps its traditional and accepted boundaries of power, and if Congress does not act to counter it, then the Exec automatically holds that new power. That is why Congress must maintain an adversarial role against any President.