Let's call Bush's (Cheney's) theory of executive power exactly what it is: a theory of plebiscite dictatorship. According to the White House and its defenders, the president has unlimited power to detain suspected terrorists, spy on suspected terrorists, and torture suspected terrorists, all without Congressional oversight or judicial checks either on their actions or on the presidential judgment of what is necessary for national security, admitting of no limit on the temporal or geographic scope of such (war-related) executive powers.
More on the flip side.
We don't have to agree entirely with
The Rude Pundit's judgment of Bush to conclude that the constitutional and political theory behind this is dangeorus to the American political system. It essentially says, "Once I'm elected [
sic], I can do what I want in the name of national security." Add to that the neocon's comfort with Leo Strauss and you have carte blanche for an
unverifiable plebiscite dictatorship, where there is no check on either the actions of the president or on the statements the president uses to justify actions taken in the name of national security.
In reality, the American republic is more robust than Karl Rove hoped. He could fool enough of the people long enough to get his boy (re-)elected, but we're just not comfortable with a plebiscite dictatorship, let alone one where a president's claims are unverifiable. Eventually, the truth has begun to win outnot early enough to save our country from several years of some pretty severe pain, but every revelation of executive excess gets us closer to a clear repudiation of an American Putinism.
The sad thing is, we have to recognize that these theories of plebiscite dictatorship will return every once in a while. Fighting them is the price of keeping our republic.