Ross Douthat's argument that in the immediate aftermath 9/11, Al Gore would have accepted the torture of terrorists, should be taken seriously. He's right to note the dangers of pretending that the executive temptations that led to Abu Ghraib only affect a small slice of Bush-era testicle crushers. That's not to suggest that, in this plane, Gore's revulsion towards Bush's methods was in any way opportunistic. Opinions are contingent on circumstance. For proof of that, think back to the battle lines when liberal hero Howard Dean was proposing 40,000 more troops for Iraq, because if we were there, we had to do the job right, and when Bush proposed the surge, ostensibly for the same reason. The lessons of the Bush years have to be structural, not simply partisan. Our system has to work against the executive's natural tendency to arrogate power. But the system is broken. Congress is supposed to provide a check on the president, even when both come from the same party. It is an institution built to be more interested in its own power than in its party. That has clearly failed. "Congress" no longer has incentives. The parties in Congress do. And the party that controls the presidency sees its incentive as ensuring the president's success, because that will lead to better electoral results and more concrete accomplishments, and the party that does not hold the White House sees their primary incentive as ensuring the president's failure, as that will lead to better electoral results and, in the long-run, more concrete accomplishments.I don't know how you make Congress act like a branch rather than a brawl. But they, along with the Courts, are the correct check on executive power. You can't simply trust our ability to identify and elect good-hearted executives. It's true that the Bush years have triggered a shift in Democratic foreign policy thinking and now many who might have abetted a Gore presidency's excesses would argue strenuously against any inclination Obama might have to mimic the horrors of the Bush years. But this too will fade. Ideologies don't persist in American life, and neither do particular presidents. The thread of continuity is the system. The system needs to work.Image used under a CC license from Takomabibelot. THE SYSTEM.
Ross Douthat's argument that in the immediate aftermath 9/11, Al Gore would have accepted the torture of terrorists, should be taken seriously. He's right to note the dangers of pretending that the executive temptations that led to Abu Ghraib only affect a small slice of Bush-era testicle crushers. That's not to suggest that, in this plane, Gore's revulsion towards Bush's methods was in any way opportunistic. Opinions are contingent on circumstance. For proof of that, think back to the battle lines when liberal hero Howard Dean was proposing 40,000 more troops for Iraq, because if we were there, we had to do the job right, and when Bush proposed the surge, ostensibly for the same reason. The lessons of the Bush years have to be structural, not simply partisan. Our system has to work against the executive's natural tendency to arrogate power. But the system is broken. Congress is supposed to provide a check on the president, even when both come from the same party. It is an institution built to be more interested in its own power than in its party. That has clearly failed. "Congress" no longer has incentives. The parties in Congress do. And the party that controls the presidency sees its incentive as ensuring the president's success, because that will lead to better electoral results and more concrete accomplishments, and the party that does not hold the White House sees their primary incentive as ensuring the president's failure, as that will lead to better electoral results and, in the long-run, more concrete accomplishments.I don't know how you make Congress act like a branch rather than a brawl. But they, along with the Courts, are the correct check on executive power. You can't simply trust our ability to identify and elect good-hearted executives. It's true that the Bush years have triggered a shift in Democratic foreign policy thinking and now many who might have abetted a Gore presidency's excesses would argue strenuously against any inclination Obama might have to mimic the horrors of the Bush years. But this too will fade. Ideologies don't persist in American life, and neither do particular presidents. The thread of continuity is the system. The system needs to work.Image used under a CC license from Takomabibelot. 
