For reasons unclear, Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness has come into my roving purview, and this brings up his now much talked about essay in the WSJ about a "strong Executive", a.k.a. the "imperial Presidency".
NOT "STRONG" OR "WEAK", BUT POOR USE
Disposed as I am to find Mansfield's broad analysis largely on the mark, I have to say, however, that the questions about the Bush Presidency are not centered on whether stronger or weaker might have been better, they are about a President and an Administration who used their strength (or "energy") poorly. Strength alone does not make one great, even if strength is required to make one great. It's really as simple as that.
A THEORY OF GOVERNMENT TOUR
For political theory junkies or those interested, be sure to read Henry Midley's take and the blogalogue that he includes at the end, for a good sampling of what "My Life as a Theorist" must be like. Teaser quote:
THE MILIEU
Many have seemed to read a lot into Mansfield's piece that I didn't see there. I think he might have just been trying to tip the scales into balance, by injecting an argument to counter, say, Schlesinger's, as he says.
If he is trying to argue, as one might, that in strength there is not good or bad, it comes out only in the ambiguous way that he ends his note, with the observation that "... the difficulties of the war in Iraq arise from having wished to leave too much to the Iraqis, thus from a sense of inhibition rather than imperial ambition." What carefully unarticulated "difficulties" would those be, moral or practical ones? For instance, is he intimating that we ought to have left the Baath party in power, via Saddam's Army, and not "lawfully" arrested the so-called deck of cards? What's more, if one reads other accounts, one might equally blame the desire to leave too little to the Iraqis, embodied, say, in General Eaton's testimony about the lack of early priority and resourcing on rebuilding Iraqi Security Forces and Rumsfeld (among others) thumbing their nose at spending US dollars on reconstruction. Before he was summarily removed, Jay Gardner wanted to leave the Iraqis to do more themselves, earlier on, and have elections pronto - was that "inhibited" or "imperial"?
THE POWER GRAB
NOT "STRONG" OR "WEAK", BUT POOR USE
Disposed as I am to find Mansfield's broad analysis largely on the mark, I have to say, however, that the questions about the Bush Presidency are not centered on whether stronger or weaker might have been better, they are about a President and an Administration who used their strength (or "energy") poorly. Strength alone does not make one great, even if strength is required to make one great. It's really as simple as that.
...questions about the Bush Presidency are not centered on whether stronger or weaker might have been better, they are about a President and an Administration who used their strength (or "energy") poorly. It's really as simple as that.
A THEORY OF GOVERNMENT TOUR
For political theory junkies or those interested, be sure to read Henry Midley's take and the blogalogue that he includes at the end, for a good sampling of what "My Life as a Theorist" must be like. Teaser quote:
The English Civil War took place as Professor Pocock and Dr Baldwin's research makes clear (see Pocock's Machiavellian Moment and Dr Baldwin's thesis in the Cambridge University Library) as a contest between two groups both claiming supreme authority when the law was violated. Henry Parker the great Parliamentarian propagandist argued for example that the law had already been attacked by the King and Parliament was obliged to act illegally in defence of the law of the land. Whether to live under the rule of law was not the issue here- both sides recognised that there were times when the state had to act illegally- the question was who could take that action. Reconstructing the civil war argument in this way allows us to proceed through the thinkers that Professor Mansfield talks about later in a much more sensible way because the fact of the matter is that by misunderstanding what the civil war was about- his entire historical trajectory after that is wrong as well.
THE MILIEU
Many have seemed to read a lot into Mansfield's piece that I didn't see there. I think he might have just been trying to tip the scales into balance, by injecting an argument to counter, say, Schlesinger's, as he says.
If he is trying to argue, as one might, that in strength there is not good or bad, it comes out only in the ambiguous way that he ends his note, with the observation that "... the difficulties of the war in Iraq arise from having wished to leave too much to the Iraqis, thus from a sense of inhibition rather than imperial ambition." What carefully unarticulated "difficulties" would those be, moral or practical ones? For instance, is he intimating that we ought to have left the Baath party in power, via Saddam's Army, and not "lawfully" arrested the so-called deck of cards? What's more, if one reads other accounts, one might equally blame the desire to leave too little to the Iraqis, embodied, say, in General Eaton's testimony about the lack of early priority and resourcing on rebuilding Iraqi Security Forces and Rumsfeld (among others) thumbing their nose at spending US dollars on reconstruction. Before he was summarily removed, Jay Gardner wanted to leave the Iraqis to do more themselves, earlier on, and have elections pronto - was that "inhibited" or "imperial"?
THE POWER GRAB
The facts of Bush-Cheney's aggrandizement of the Executive and empowerment of the military (at the expense of State and CIA) are well known. For issues on which the "tension" that Mansfield describes have come up, what we see is a belligerent Executive, under Bush, even one with open contempt for the 'inefficacy' and 'boneheadedness' of the legislature.
Other modern Presidents who have been strong have worked in a consultative fashion, in the American tradition, to gloss-over the "tensions" with back-room machinations and understandings. To the contrary, Bush-Cheney seem almost naturally confrontational, and they have caucused in private and, afterwards, slammed legislation through on important issues. They have done end-runs around the Spirit of the Laws, on issues like torture and detainment, fostering blunders which have ended up profoundly against the common good, not only because they have jeopardized trials but because they have corrupted the military and the CIA (see Philip Zimbardo, if no other, for details about how these issues extend beyond Abu Grhaib).
