Are Democrats Enabling Bush Administration “Radicalism?”

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald comes out and flatly states what some Bush administration critics have said less diplomatically: if the Bush administration is more “radical” than conservative, some Congressional Democrats have played a huge role in helping it achieve its goals:

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 — almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history — that George W. Bush can “demand” that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply…..

And, indeed, some may ask: just how can GWB (whose poll numbers are now so south that they are in the South Pole and the Russians are staking a claim on them) demand?

The answer is that the Presidency, even in this weakest time in terms of poll-number-documented popular support, remains what the great reformist Republican President Teddy Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit.” But in the Bush administration era, the emphasis remains on the first word, in the schoolyard sense.

It isn’t as if Bush & Co can count on the entire Democratic Party. But some Democrats generally share their beliefs. So does non-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman who now tilts so predictably often into the GOP camp that he seemingly needs a new classification: IINO (Independent In Name Only).

With such a frail Democratic control of the Senate, Bush can adeptly peel off some Demmies and create a winning coalition composed of those who share his world view plus those who fear he and Karl Rove will go after them for being weak on national security issues.

As Greenwald notes — and some conservative talk radio hosts will often remind their many listeners — quite a lot of what has happened in the Bush administration that is being condemned by many Democrats, independents and classic conservatives as actually radical could never have happened without a winning Bush coalition that included Democrats who formally approved of it — no matter what their intentions or actual beliefs:

Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush’s radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits — and then go far beyond — by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.

Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O’Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.

And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA — a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.

Greenwald argues that their compliance is due to The (Political) Fear Factor. But, he notes:

In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.

He also rejects the argument that passing the wiretap renew with the expanded powers isn’t all that big a deal since it’s only good for 180 days — because, he predicts, in 180 days the same Democrats will again go along with GWB. He also has what he terms a “dispiriting” interview with Senator Chris Dodd, which leads Greenwald to conclude the Demmies really have no plan in dealing with the Bush administration.

You can agree with Greenwald’s basic characterization or not but one one thing he is right on the money:

This administration has been flat out lousy in governing through aggregating interests and coalition building. But on civil liberties, Iraq and so many other matters Bush doesn’t yield and when he talks no-compromise he manages to intimidate enough of his foes so they either join him or seemingly panic and fold.

To be sure, what is at stake is not a teeny thing. Tools the government says it needs to safeguard national security ain’t a bridge to nowhere. And too many Americans have indeed grown complacent and forget the feeling immediately after 911 that the country was going to have to sew up holes in our security and get tougher to battle and prevent terrorism. So conservative critics are right in saying we are NOT back to pre-911 days.

But what underlies Greenwald’s piece is a fact: the Bush administration squandered unprecedented national unity by politicizing national security and the terrorism issue by constantly trying to use it as a bludgeon against the Democrats — in effect replacing the 1950s/1960s soft on Communism mantra with a new soft on terrorism mantra. In effect, McCarthyism has been replaced by Cheneyism. And many Democrats fear it.

You can see the politics of political demonization at play by reading this Bill Kristol piece. If you’re a political independent, a moderate, centrist, or a Republican or Democrat, did you realize that you are a “defeatist” if you don’t support the administration’s war policies and management? Did you realize that Congress is actually working for the U.S. to LOSE the war? It’s the politics of negative labeling. And that’s what some Democrats are unwilling or afraid to resist.

And so Greenwald is correct: if historians look back on the Bush administration as one that gobbled up chunks of Congressional power, transformed the balances in checks and balances, and unbalanced traditional balances, they’re unlikely to just point to Bush or the former “What-Does-Oversight-Mean” GOP-controlled Congress.

They’ll also point to Democrats who agreed with Bush on some issues joining in alliance with Democrats who might have disagreed with Bush but were too politically scared of losing their seats so they submitted to the bully pulpit. And to an IINO.