The constitutionally heretical monster of presidential absolutism that underlay the vast crimes of Watergate is alive, well, and more robust than ever. The new, new, new Nixons are among us, excusing and even flaunting criminal abuses of power as merely the sad exigencies of national security.
The public has forgotten how critical the exalted claim of "national security" was to the banal perpetrators of Watergate. As Nixon and cohorts so fervently believed, the president could not secure the orderly world he envisioned if political opposition was allowed to flourish and somehow menace that vision. Hence the genesis of bugging and wiretapping and breaking and entering and burglarizing any who might possibly stand in the way. It was for their own good, for the country's own good -- it was for the good of "national security."
Once these self-justified criminal acts came to light, then further crimes, from perjury to obstruction of justice, were once again justified on the grounds of national security. All that magnetic evidence on those revealing tapes contained complicated excuses of national security that the public might not understand, might not appreciate, and at any rate should not be privy to.
There was more to Nixon's cover-up of having ordered the CIA's obstruction of the FBI's investigation into Watergate crimes than self-preservation, or so the president and his aides convinced themselves. One revelation might lead to another, and before long the public might know of dark but necessary national security secrets behind historical shenanigans like the Bay of Pigs. The linkage was obscure, ludicrous, even laughable, but "national security" was the president's understanding friend. Better to keep a lid on the whole thing. It was for everyone's own good.
But not everyone understood the president's absolute need for absolute authority on essential matters of national security -- matters that would eventually entail, for example, the unquestioned need to rifle an American citizen's private psychiatric files. Such understanding was, rather, largely limited to commonplace hoodlums without any grasp of their nation's history and the whys and wherefores of its embrace of constitutional guarantees -- hoodlums now elevated to inner circles of power. They knew better.
As the slime of Watergate spilled into public ken at Senate hearings, the hoodlums were by then openly justifying criminal act after criminal act on the elusive grounds of national security and the president's monarchical need to direct it. Yet those grounds were eerily difficult to comprehend precisely because of their elusiveness. As one senator (Herman Talmadge) struggled to ascertain, given the arguments presented, just where any line of presidential power could be drawn, he asked one of the hoodlums {John Ehrlichman):
"Now if the President could authorize a covert break-in, and you do not know exactly what that power would be limited [to], you do not think it could include murder or other crimes beyond covert break-ins, do you?"
To which the lawyerly hoodlum responded just as uncomprehendingly: "I do not know where the line is, Senator."
So the senator tried the enlightenment angle: "Do you remember when we were in law school, we studied a famous principle of law that came from England and also is well known in this country, that no matter how humble a man's cottage is, that even the King of England cannot enter without his consent?"
Hoodlum, defiant and self-justifying: "I am afraid that has been considerably eroded over the years, has it not?"
Apparently so.
Perhaps it is excusable that a public burdened by daily worries of wage stagnation, spiraling healthcare costs or no healthcare at all, real retirement doubts and the like would have fallen asleep over the last 30 years. Perhaps it is excusable that, given these preoccupying worries, the public was slow in recognizing and storming the castle of the constitutionally heretical monster of Mr. Bush.
But it remains Congress' constitutionally imperative job to do so, whatever inattention may outward lie. And if the present Congress continues its abdication of responsibility, its incoming members should raise holy hell, for as the New York Times editorialized this morning with devastating historical accuracy ...
"Mr. Bush [has] made it clear that, for now, his idea of how to 'put the elections behind us' is to use the Republicans’ last two months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the law that limits a president’s ability to abuse his power in this way.... Mr. Cheney and a few other hard-liners have been trying to turn back the clock and have succeeded in some truly scary ways, including the military commissions act they pushed through Congress before the elections."
We've seen this executive team before, and we recognized then its implications for our "security." The new Congressional team should tell the new, new, new Nixons and their legislative enablers in no unclear terms where to get off -- that enough is enough -- or "putting the elections behind us" will put behind us a lot more than that.