Saturday, March 2, 2019
Imperial presidency Essay
In the age of the proud governing body, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that, in the totality of Ameri butt chronicle, a personnelful chief executive has been the exception preferably than the rule. Indeed, until the mid-twentieth century, the just about powerful person in recreation sentence American governments was the Speaker of the Ho part of Representatives rather than the death chair. Prior to serviceman War II, chairwomanial power was ascendant just now during state of wartime. It is no mistake that the three men comm and cited as our superlative presidents also direct the nation through its three most outstanding wars.The image of George Washington as president is inseparable from his role in the American Revolution. Abraham Lincoln is remembered for his role in preserving the Union through the polished War other aspects of his presidency argon largely ignored. Although Franklin Roosevelt accumulated massive individualized power during the 1930s, he will be remembered for guiding the united States through World War II in the 1940s. George W. bush-league often refers to himself as the Commander in Chief rather than simply the chair or the Chief administrator.This reflects President Bushs recognition of the fact that Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is the most heavy and unchecked power that a president is granted under the constitution. some(prenominal) student of history is aware that a president is far more powerful when he is perceived to be not just a chief executive but a commandant in chief. In other words, for a president to be histori invitey powerful, there must be a war on. The watershed moment for the imperial American presidency was the aftermath of World War II.After e really antecedent American war, the nation had demobilized, the president had assumed his traditional, more limited portfolio, and the coition had reestablished its position as the pivotal branch of the federal government. After World War II, however, and specially after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, there was no demobilization. Instead, the executive branch of the federal government underwent an give-up the ghost and reorganization that irreversibly changed the constitution of the presidency and of the join States itself.President Truman would clay sculpture a insurance that was without precedent in American history this policy would call for large standing armies in peacetime, a radically modify and centralized executive, and a willingness to project American force around the world, at times without direct congressional approval. The underlying logic to this revolution in American government was the need to contain the expansionist designs of the Soviet Union. In 1947, the field Security Act created the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Council.This public of a spy agency, a permanent standing army, and a radically strengthened executive changed forever the nature of Am erican government. After the National Security Act of 1947, a permanent war footing, or at least a war psychology, settled over Washington, D. C. Although the joined States was technically at peace more often than not for the rest of the century, the presidents identity as commander in chief maintained a gravity that simply would have been impossible in previous periods.One mitigating factor in this peddle was the logistical realities of modern warfare, body forth most purely and terribly by nuclear weapons. The incomparable injury that such weapons could exact, and the relative speed with which they could be delivered, precluded consultations between the President and the social intercourse under m whatsoever feasible scenarios. This inevitably strengthened the latitude and change magnitude the responsibility of the chief executive, who could become the commander in chief, responsible for the bodily survival of the United States, at any given moment.The psychological shift w as just as important as the revolution in weaponry. For the send-off time the United States, or at least its leadership, perceived itself to be under siege even in the absence of a unrecorded war. The mentation of a orbiculate and aggressive Soviet menace led to a willingness in American leaders to interpret local and obscure conflicts as part of a broader communist conspiracy that must be contained by a massive American military machine.Human nature being what it is, the unprecedented size and power of the Pentagon made it far easier for American presidents to order the use of force, which in turn consolidated their power as active commanders in chief. From 1947 through 1991, the United States fought two major wars in Korea and Vietnam, but the overarching Cold War solidified the idea that the presidents primary and permanent role was to serve as commander in chief. This notion would have known no place in America prior to World War II.The nation was founded on a well-reasone d fear of centralized executives and the nation had spent most of its early history avoiding such pitfalls. During the Cold War, it embraced this pitfall as an unfortunate necessity, if not a virtue. At the end of the Cold War, there was talk of a peace dividend which would allow for radically reduced defense spending and, by implication, a more restrained presidency. The Gulf War of 1991 arrived just in time to forestall any radical lurch in that direction.During the Clinton administration, the presidency remained powerful, and the United States carried out several military operations from Haiti to Kosovo. The strength of the presidency was only magnified by the fact that the United States was now the only globular superpower. The 9/11 attacks, of course, put America on an uncertain war footing analogous to the Cold War. George W. Bush declared with what looked to some as great excitement that he was a war president.Since the United States has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for six years, Bushs personal power has been established by stressing his identity as commander in chief, identifying the defense of the United States as his most important task. Another get out that has risen out of Bushs embrace of the imperial presidency is how such power is exercised domestically as opposed to internationally. President Bush and his attorneys have argued that the United States is involved in a war in which all of the Earth, including the United States, is the battlefield.This means, according to their arguments, that the presidents power as commander in chief applies just as ofttimes in the United States as anywhere else. This dubious and dangerous idea has led to unwarranted surveillance of American citizens in the United States, indefinite detention without charge or legal representation for anyone identified by the commander in chief as an enemy combatant, and the use of enhanced interrogation on detainees, which any honest person would call torture.These draconian measures are best embodied in the forces way Act of 2006, which effectively suspends Habeas Corpus and all subsequent legal rights to any individual declared an enemy on the sole authority of the commander in chief. The domestic and international conditions which prevailed when the founding fathers wrote the constitution are manifestly no longer valid. It is a testament to the genius of these men that the American system has lasted as long as it has.While certain changes are necessary and inevitable over the decades and the centuries, I am personally very uncomfortable with the level of power that is concentrated in the modern presidency, especially as manifested by the Bush administration. The current administration is the embodiment of the danger inherent in so much power being vested in a single person. After World War II, new global realities called for a more robust presidency, but the balance that was struck with alter degrees of success throughout the Cold War i s absent from the current situation.The Military Commission Act of 2006 allows the President to kidnap an American citizen, hold him in prison without charging him with a crime, letting him see a lawyer or a judge, or telling his family where he is, torture him, and never plow him. This is not hyperbole it is now allowable under American law. nigh people with respect for human dignity and for the American constitution can agree that this is not the America we want to live in. A democracy cannot wage war. When you go to war, you pass a law giving erratic powers to the President.The people of the country assume when the emergency is over, the rights and powers that were temporarily delegated to the Chief Executive will be returned to the states, counties and to the people. General Walter Bedell Smith (Weiner 189).Works Cited Lowi, Theodore J. , Benjamin Ginsberg, and Kenneth A. Shepsle. American Government Power and Purpose. W. W. Norton, 2005. Shafritz, Jay M. and Lee S. Weinber g. Classics in American Government. Wadsworth Publishing, 2005. Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes The score of the CIA. Doubleday, 2007.
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