Keeping the Republic Blog

Christine Barbour out this week--3/27/06

To the KTRblog community:

We just wanted to let you know that because of travel and other circumstances, Christine Barbour will not be able to post on the blog this week. She'll be back next week keeping us all informed of what's going on in the political world and how it fits with the book.

Cheers,

The CQP editorial folks

Civil Liberties: Moussaoui's, Al Qaeda's and Ours -- 3/16/06

Good morning, everyone.  Spring Break here at I.U. – hope yours is good wherever it finds you.

A couple of stories to follow this week. 

First, there is the curious story about the FAA lawyer in the Moussaoui sentencing trial. The lawyer, Carla Martin, seems to have single-handedly undermined the federal government’s effort to get the death penalty for 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. In opposition to the expressed orders of the judge in the case that the witnesses should not be exposed to the trial proceedings so that they could not alter their testimony, Martin sent emails to seven witnesses, strategizing about what they were going to say on the stand. (Adam Liptak, Crossing a Fine Line on Witness Coaching, NYT, 3/16/06.) The judge called her behavior “egregious,” and  said that the federal case against Moussaoui had to proceed without the testimony from the witnesses. Prosecutors say this deals their case a death blow, and have asked the judge to reconsider. (Jerry Markon, Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling, WaPo, 3/16/06.)

Since Moussaoui has pled guilty, it is hard to see what the fuss is about here. What is at stake is not whether he gets off free (he won’t) but whether he faces the death penalty or life imprisonment. It will help to understand what is happening here if we apply the procedural/substantive distinction we lay out in Chapters 1 and 2 of KTR (pp. 10-11, 47-48). We explain that often in procedural cultures (like ours) it is more important to ensure that the rules are followed properly than to achieve some particular substantive outcome. We put our faith in procedural due process, to be sure that the rules treat everyone fairly and impartially, and trust that fair results will follow. We could of course say, “Well, we know Moussaoui is guilty, he has confessed after all, so what difference does it make if we ignore this witness tampering at the sentencing stage. What the judge in the case has to grapple with is the fact that because our system guarantees fair rules to everyone, to deny Moussaoui his rights will jeopardize the rights of all of us. If they can be waived for him, they can be waived for anyone.

This issue throws into relief the ongoing scandal of the American treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. Some have tried to claim that because the stakes are so huge here (preventing a future terrorist attack) or because these prisoners are not on American soil or are not American citizens, that American procedural guarantees do not apply. Others argue that we are bound by the Geneva Convention and by our own standards of morals and decency to protect the human rights of those we take prisoner. Perhaps the most compelling reason against the torture, offered by critics such as Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war of the Vietnamese, is that to treat the captives as we fear they would treat us sinks us to their level and endangers the American democratic ethic which is what we want above all to protect. The online journal Salon.com has excellent in depth coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal and has just put up on its site an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of the abuse, obtained form the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. (Joan Walsh, The Abu Ghraib Files, salon.com.) 

Take a look at those photos and ask yourself what difference it makes if the United States engages in torture of its prisoners. Is this kind of substantive behavior (treating people as if they are guilty without a trial and taking an “ends justify the means” approach) ever justified? In the Abu Ghraib case, who is responsible for maintaining American standards of behavior – the people on the ground or the people in charge? Does the Abu Ghraib situation shed any like on the judge’s ruling in the Moussaoui trial?

***

Other stories to follow this week. President Bush is issuing a document today reaffirming the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war that we discuss in Chapter 18 (pp. 811-812). (Peter Baker, Bush to Restate Terror Strategy, WaPo, 3/16/06.) Essentially, the document will recommit the U.S. to the strategy we embarked on with the war against Iraq in 2002. Should that commitment be tempered by any of the events of the last three years?

Finally, take a look at the NYT article about how Republicans are seizing on Senator Russ Feingold’s efforts to censure President Bush over the NSA spying issue. With Bush’s approval ratings at new lows in the polls, Republicans need to rally their base to get them to turn out in the November congressional elections. Declaring that it is necessary to vote Republican in order to hold off censure or even impeachment proceedings gives them a way to excite voters who are frustrated with the previously popular president’s performance since he was reelected. (David D. Kirkpatrick, Call for Censure is Rallying Cry to Bush’s Base, NYT 3/16/06.) Feingold’s efforts have not been met with any marked success – far more senators voted to censure President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal than have stepped forward to support Feingold on this civil liberties issue. Why?

Divided Government -- 3/9/06

When a president has the public on his side, he can often get Congress to do what he wants, even when the majority party is other than his own. When his popularity begins to tank, it can even be difficult to get his own party to follow his agenda. That’s where President Bush finds himself now. With his approval ratings in some polls at the level of Nixon’s before he resigned, he has limited political clout with either party. Members of Congress who face reelection in less than nine months are reluctant to hitch their fates to his dimming star. (Carl Hulse, A Rebellion in the GOP on Security, A Signature Issue, NYT, 3/9/06.) 

That’s not news, of course, but it is one of the enduring stories of the last few months, as I have noted in this blog. The latest evidence is the outright resistance of Congress to the Dubai ports deal. Ironically, the actual issue here may be a red herring – the ports deal has been endorsed even by stalwart critics of the president. But with public opinion running heavily against it, it has become radioactive for Congress. Despite veto threats from the president, the House is acting to halt the takeover, and the Senate may not be far behind. (Andrea Stone, House Panel Votes to Kill Ports Deal, USA Today, 3/9/06.) 

The worsening relationship between the president and the legislature can be seen in President Bush’s remarks yesterday, blaming Congress for underfunding the post-Katrina rebuilding effort on the gulf coast. (Michael A. Fletcher and Spencer S. Hsu, Bush: Congress ‘Shortchanged’ New Orleans, WaPo, 3/9/06.)

For the president, of course, none of this is good news. For the rest of us, it may be a different story. The founders devised our system to check and balance itself, so that no one branch could become too powerful. With a president who believed in strengthening the executive branch, and Congress disinclined to cross him, we haven’t seen too much checking and balancing in the years since 9/11. What are the advantages and disadvantages for a democracy of a president and Congress finding themselves at loggerheads?

Presidential Capital -- 3/1/06

Still a kind of slow news period, but it's worth taking time to think about the impact on Bush of the many bits of bad news, self inflicted and otherwise, that have come his way in the last six months or so.

Last night in a TV news interview, President Bush said he wasn’t concerned about his low ratings in recent polls, and insisted that he still has plenty of political capital to get things done. Having hit an approval rating of 34% in a CBS poll released a couple days ago, however, he is sounding new depths and, wishful thinking aside, he does not have the clout even with congressional Republicans that he did when his fortunes were rosier.

In Chapter 8 we explain that a president’s ability to get things done legislatively depends to a large extent on his ability to persuade Congress to go along with him, which in turn depends on his popularity with the public. The furor over the Dubai deal, which appears to be in increasing trouble, despite the company itself having asked for an investigation of security concerns  (Carl Hulse, New Concerns on Port Deal are Raised in Congress, NYT, 3/1/06), shows that even Republicans loyal to Bush are deserting him over this.

There are some excellent analyses of Bush’s approval ratings and of polls on the Dubai port deal at mysterypollster.com (specifically, here and here). You can find good analysis of how the administration came to drop the ball so badly on this issue at Sheryl Gay Stolberg, How a Deal Became a Liability for the GOP (NYT, 2/26/06); and on the implications of that, along with events from Katrina to the Cheney hunting incident, on his ability to get things done in his second term at Tom Raum, Bush Beset by Political Miscues (WaPo, 2/27/06).