Commander in Caudillo

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell yesterday asked White House spokeswoman Dana Perino if Bush is a lame duck. Perino's response: "The president is never going to be a lame duck -- he's commander in chief at a time of war." (Emphasis added)

This from Dan Froomkin, of the Washington Post, A Lurid Look Behind the Curtain.

Speaking of which, Garry Wills, professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, has written an excellent op-ed in the NYTimes, At Ease, Mr. President, regarding the use (misuse) of the term "Commander in Chief" as a synonym for "President." Not so, says Wills:

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

* * * *

The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.

* * * *

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.

In Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz discusses the impact of this militarization of our politics, referring to the NYTimes case mentioned in Secrecy Is at Issue in Suits Opposing Spy Program. The concerns are not theoretical; as the article examines the extraordinary steps the Justice Department is taking to control legal proceedings with national security implications. As Kurtz notes:

Congress and the Judiciary have allowed themselves to be steamrolled by the Executive. The mid-term elections forced Congress to change. There is no such external corrective mechanism for the Judiciary, which is at it should be. So judges and justices will have to stand up to defend an independent judiciary. Will they? The record so far is mixed, at best.

And of course, for the definitive word on this issue, read Glenn Greenwald's piece, Public servant v. Military Commander. He agrees with Wills' analysis, but he considered the issue last year during the NSA illegal eavesdropping program revelations. Greenwald adds:

This is much more than semantics. The constant, improper references to President Bush as "Commander-in-Chief" -- rather than what Theodore Roosevelt called "merely the most important among a large number of public servants" -- pervades the media and shapes how it talks about the President in all sorts of destructive ways.

In other words, as a Commander, he's a Caudillo.

Tags: Commentary, Bush, Politics