On Double Standards
One of the most charmingly naive arguments mustered by conservative critics of the Avignon Presidency's laughably bloated sense of its own constitutional prerogatives is to ask other conservatives how they will feel if these expanded powers fall into the hands of, say, President Hillary Clinton. The answer to this is very simple -- no Democratic president ever will be allowed to use them. Almost immediately, a Democratic president who tries even the most tepid exercise of these alleged powers will be pilloried on the Right as the lineal descendant of Heinrich Himmler. Recent criticisms -- almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press in real time, while the Bushies actually were feeding the Constitution into the woodchipper -- will suddenly be given new life as examples of liberal -- or, to use C-Plus Augustus's favorite term of art, "Democrat" -- hypocrisy, a master narrative beloved by the cocktails-on-Nantucket crowd. I do not doubt the good faith of conservative scholars like Bruce Fein on these issues. They have been brave and true. But they either misunderstand, or don't care to engage, the profound bad faith in which movement conservatism engages all questions of public policy. Those people have no compunction about acting upon principles wholly at odds with the principles they earlier have espoused most vigorously. Indeed, that is the most essential tactic they have. Consider the case of uber-charlatan John Yoo, who is what Alexander Hamilton would be if Hamilton had the constitutional knowledge of a ferret. Here's an interesting example. I assure you that this dynamic will be at play for the entire eight years of a Democratic administration. It will be obvious and shameless and an awful lot of people in my business will pretend not to see what is plainly in front of them.
As always, read the rest over at Dr. Alterman's place.
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