[Note, this was originally a response I wrote to someone who supports President Bush and seems to think he can do no wrong. My wife suggested with a few minor modifications (such as removing identifying information), it would do well to be posted here, so here it is. -- Liam]

Why does it seem like the Administration apologists' response to disagreeing with the WAY something is done is to claim the disagree-er disagrees with it BEING done?

Let me give an example: I think people should drive safely and obey the speed limit. I also absolutely believe people should go to work and earn money so they can pay their bills, support their families, etc. But I believe they should obey reasonable traffic laws and sane driving behaviors in the process of getting there.

The argument over the warrantless wiretapping issue of late is NOT over whether we should be engaging in national security programs. If the argument of those of us who don't like THIS PARTICULAR program is like my saying I think people should drive safely and sanely, then the Republican talking point reaction is like claiming I'm against people being able to work and to support themselves.

President Bush does absolutely have a mandate to protect this country. But he must do it within the law. Violating the Constitution and the core principles of this country in order to save it is like locking your child in the basement and never letting them out so as to make sure no one ever hurts them.

There is a certain fallacy to the Right Wing opinion about what it means that Bush is the President, as if that puts him above oversight by the Congress. Our government was set up to have three EQUAL branches of government, each set up in a different way and each an effective check/balance over the others. The point was to make it as difficult as possible for any one group to manage to wrest control over the government.

I would point out that even if you believe that President Bush is a good and noble man of principle (a point on which we will simply have to disagree), keep in mind that the shifts of power we give him will continue on to the next President and the next and the next. Pick a President you don't think was moral and/or ethical. Clinton, perhaps, or Nixon, or perhaps a future elected hypothetical corrupt President, and imagine those same powers in THAT President's hands. Before arguing in favor of expanded powers for the President and decreased oversight by the other branches, realize you are not simply handing that to the current Administration, but to all who come after.

That's why the signing statements are so odious. Previous Presidents have used them, but generally to clarify some point of law or other, or to make some historically significant statement on the occasion of the signing of the law. No other President has used them to anything like the extent President Bush has, nor has any previous President so frequently referenced the “Unitary Executive” theory in his signing statements, a theory which holds that the President alone is responsible for the behavior of the President, and that anything the President does is legal because he did it.

To really buy into the Unitary Executive theory, you have to believe that President Clinton was entirely on legal grounds when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In fact, you have to believe that Impeachment itself is an invalid section of the Constitution if by definition the President can not disobey the law. The President's job, according to the Constitution, is the faithful execution of the laws enacted by Congress. You hear all this talk of Judicial activism and the complaint that Judges are “making law” instead of enforcing it. The President's signing statements are exactly the same thing: An attempt to co-opt the Congressional power of law making as set out in the Constitution. Note that Bush is the first President in recent history to (so far) not have vetoed a single piece of legislation. Part of that may be because he has an ideologically similar Congress, but part is because he feels that issuing a statement saying that he doesn't believe the law applies to him makes him exempt from having to follow it, be it a law against torture or a law requiring certain oversight of use of certain Patriot Act powers. He's usurping Congresses law-making role. Arguably, he's asserting a way of accomplishing the line-item veto for himself, even though such a targeted veto power has already once been found unconstitutional by the Judiciary. Any part of a law he doesn't like, he just says "I don't feel obliged to follow this part of this law" and thinks that's just peachy.

Keep in mind that the framers of the Constitution considered Congress to be the primary (first among equals) branch of government, which is why they set it down on paper first (Section 1) and the President second (Section 2). The President is not, and can not be allowed to be above the law, nor above oversight. No one, not one human being is above being corrupted, at least a little bit, when they know they won't be caught. It may be small things (if you knew there were no police out on the road on a given day, wouldn't you drive a bit faster?) or big, but anyone handed a power and no chance of being caught if they misuse it will at least be TEMPTED to do so.

[The original author to whom I was responding] asserts that if the President had to get permission before the wire tapping, NY might be a big grave yard right now. However, that argument misses several facts.

1. According to recent reports, in all of the wiretapping that's gone on, almost no useful information has been gotten, no terrorist plots foiled.
2. There was plenty of warning in the FBI and elsewhere (including at least one Presidential Daily Briefing) before 9/11 that an attack like the one we suffered was impending, so it wasn't lack of knowledge that allowed it to happen.
3. Most importantly, the FISA law allows for RETROACTIVE warrants. When a legitimate argument can be made for speed, the warrant may be applied for up to 72 hours AFTER the search or wire tap. Indeed the whole flap is not because of the wire tapping, it is because he didn't get permission either before or within 72 hours, as the FISA law both allowed and required that he do.

What the warrant requirement accomplishes is not the slowing down of the process (as the President would have us believe), but the assurance that the President is only spying on suspected terrorists and not on political rivals, anti-war protesters or anyone else he's not legally allowed to spy on. If he's not misusing his power, why does he object to oversight? And if he IS misusing his power, all the more reason the rest of us need to INSIST on oversight.

As to [the original author's] view of this President personally, and of his having been chosen by God, again we'll just have to agree to disagree. For me, I know that in just about every state that had the new electronic voting machines (particularly those made by Diebold) there were widespread instances of irregularities. Machines going down and when they came back up, suddenly there were many more votes for Bush. Machines reporting more votes for Bush than were actually cast in total in those districts. Vote counts which, for the first time in the history of exit polling, were more than the statistical margin-of-error off from the exit poll results. And every single documented irregularity just HAPPENED to favor President Bush over Senator Kerry. Someone chose President Bush, but it wasn't God, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the voters either. Do you really believe the God that sent His only Son to teach us not to hate or kill or covet what our neighbors have would support a President who had (as more and more evidence comes in to support) started a first-strike war on a country that was no threat, determined to go to war while insisting to the country and the world that he was trying every diplomatic strategy available?

You have trust and faith in this President. I think you're blind to his obvious failings and faults. We'll have to agree to disagree on that point, but nevertheless, I don't understand how a President who is playing by the rules has anything to fear from Constitutionally mandated oversight, and the more someone tries to avoid the same scrutiny every one of his predecessors had to endure, the more we should demand it.

Finally, I want to point out something regarding Germany in the late 1930s. Hitler was coming to power, and he had lots of popular support. After the war, people asked “How could the German people, most of whom are good, moral people, have supported that? How could they have let that happen?” And the truth is that they didn't SEE it happening. They couldn't believe it was true. No one wanted to believe it was true.

Do I think George Bush is Hitler? No, of course not. But our government was set up the way it was specifically to prevent someone like Hitler from amassing power and being able to perpetrate heinous acts before anyone realized what he was up to. We should all be exceedingly concerned any time that system which was so well thought out and has served us so well for 230 years is tampered with, either by asserting an unprecedented level of Presidential power or with talk of taking the judiciary down a peg. The balance of powers is a delicate thing, carefully placed. Too much shifting of weight and the whole thing could topple over.

Liam.