Fielding Subpoenas
Bush recruits an expert on Presidential power.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
For a President said to be irrelevant, George W. Bush has certainly managed to hire a big name to be his next chief White House counsel. In recruiting Fred Fielding, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten has donned some necessary armor for the subpoena assault that is sure to come from Democrats in Congress.
Mr. Fielding replaces Harriet Miers, a Texan and personal friend of the President. Ms. Miers was an ill-fated nominee for the Supreme Court, but she served Mr. Bush well both on judicial selection and preserving Presidential powers. Both of those areas are likely to get fiercer as Democrats look to bloody the White House in the run-up to 2008.
It's hard to imagine a more experienced choice than Mr. Fielding on the subject of executive power. As deputy White House counsel from 1972 to 1974, he witnessed the modern low tide of Presidential authority as Richard Nixon was besieged by Watergate. And as Ronald Reagan's counsel from 1981 to 1986, he had to cope with a Democratic House that unleashed special prosecutors on the executive branch.
The "independent counsel" law has happily expired, but this Congress will be looking to assert itself in particular on war powers. Mr. Fielding understands the importance of fighting off such poaching--for the sake of Mr. Bush and the Office of the Presidency. This ought to mean recommending that Mr. Bush veto any weakening of last year's law on military tribunals, as well as resisting any further delegation of executive power to the judiciary for approving warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda.
The question of responding to the avalanche of subpoenas will be more politically delicate. Congress has every right to conduct oversight of the executive branch, and the White House will be obliged to supply numerous documents. However, the principle of executive privilege is vital to Presidential decision-making, and preserving the privacy of that deliberative process will be one of Mr. Fielding's primary tasks.
Another duty will be offering Mr. Bush advice on judicial selection. The conventional Beltway wisdom is that Senate Democrats will block all but liberal nominees to the appellate courts, and that might be right. But the judges issue proved to be a good one for Republicans in both the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, and the White House shouldn't shrink from appointing capable members of the Federalist Society simply because they might not be confirmed.
This is an issue that deserves to be framed for 2008--all the more so if Mr. Bush gets another Supreme Court nomination. Democrats may want to block any Bush nominee, but they won't find it politically painless to do so if the President selects nominees as capable and conservative as Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Amid all the Washington talk of "bipartisanship," the reality of our current political division means inevitable conflict. It's good to see Mr. Bush recruiting some experienced generals for the battles ahead.
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