Changing Winds on Surveillance
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By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Columnist
The Washington Post
Friday 10 February 2006
This week the Bush administration was finally forced out of its own pre-Sept. 11 worldview - and, yes, you read that right. It happened because some brave Republicans stared the president down and said: Stop.
Of course, it is the administration that is always accusing its opponents of pre-Sept. 11 thinking. But for the past five years, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove have been willing to put the national unity required to fight terrorism in second place behind their goals of aggrandizing presidential power and winning elections. Can you get more pre-Sept. 11 than that?
Instead of seeking broad agreement on the measures required for our nation's safety, they preferred to pick fights designed to make the Democrats look soft and to claim the president could do pretty much anything he wanted.
That's why the White House made sure that Rove trumpeted the surveillance issue before the Republican National Committee last month. A president who cared more about national security than politics wouldn't send out his top political lieutenant to make sure everyone knew that the GOP planned to use a matter of such grave importance to bash Democrats.
And it's why Cheney, when asked this week by Jim Lehrer if Bush was willing to work with Congress on the issue, barely entertained the question. "We believe, Jim, that we have all the legal authority we need," Cheney replied immediately. Congress could make any suggestions it wanted, but - I add the italics to underscore the point - the White House would ignore whatever it chose to ignore. "We'd have to make a decision as an administration whether or not we think it would help and would enhance our capabilities."
Translation - Cheney to Congress: Buzz off.
But this time some important members of the president's own party - led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter - decided that enough is enough. As stewards of Congress's constitutional authority, they could not stand by while the president claimed the power to decide for himself what the law said and whether he needed to follow it without any concern for what those meddlesome members of Congress or judges might say.
And it's wonderful to see what a few brave politicians can achieve. Yesterday, the administration agreed to brief the Senate intelligence committee on the program after having offered a similar briefing to the comparable House committee the day before.
It was a small crack in the wall, and Specter and his allies will have to remain vigilant. Still, until this week, the White House had flatly refused to offer such briefings. The winds are changing.
What's heartening is how broad the Republican dissent from the administration has been - a sign that many Republicans have calculated that they'll be better off in this fall's elections if they do their jobs, even if this means challenging Bush and Cheney.
Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who faces a tough reelection battle and has shown streaks of independence in the past, demanded the briefings for reasons straight out of a good civics textbook. "The checks and balances in our system of government are very important," she said, noting that our "constitutional structure has kept us safe and free and the strongest country in the world for a very long time." Yes, let's wave a flag for this Air Force veteran.
Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), who also is up for reelection, said that "this country would be stronger and the president would be stronger" if Bush accepted the idea that Congress might actually have a role in lawmaking on the surveillance issue.
And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the administration was making a "very dangerous" argument in claiming that it got the authority to wiretap without supervision when Congress passed its use-of-force resolution against terrorism. Graham said he never envisioned that he was giving Bush - or "any other president" - "carte blanche" on surveillance.
Focus for a moment on Graham's reference to "any other president." It's instructive to imagine what Republicans in Congress (let alone Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly) would say if a President Hillary Rodham Clinton were to claim the far-reaching authority Bush and Cheney say they have. Is there any doubt that the entire Republican Party would - to cite a recent comment by Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman - "have a lot of anger" and denounce Clinton for arrogance, overreaching and power lust?
"The president should have all the tools he needs to fight terrorism," Specter said, "but we also want to maintain our civil liberties." Now there is a perfect expression of patriotic, post-Sept. 11 thinking.
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