Scott Lemieux looks beyond last week's Boumediene decision to consider how progressives should talk about executive power:
In particular, there is no reason for progressives to accept the argument that there is a zero-sum tradeoff between reasonable protections of civil liberties and national security. Especially when one considers opportunity costs, there is, in fact, little security value in arbitrarily detaining people against whom the government lacks evidence. As Stephen Holmes has argued in his book The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror, the Bush administration's aggrandizements of executive power (and Congress' unwillingness to properly exercise its restraining and oversight functions) have undermined national security rather than preserved it. Long-term arbitrary detentions are bad for both civil liberties and the security of the American public, and it's crucial for liberals not to concede the latter half of the equation.
And Terrence Samuel points out that, while President Bush's recent expression of regret is refreshing, he still is regretting the wrong thing:
But what is certain, and what will pain Bush until the end of his days, is that he will always be remembered as the president who dismantled and destroyed his own party after it had dominated American politics for more than a generation. Almost single-handedly.
It is possible that John McCain may overcome the Bush drag on the Republican ticket to win in November, but the GOP is certain to lose even more seats in Congress than it did in 2006. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll (PDF) shows Democrats with a 19-point lead in the "generic congressional ballot," meaning that, without regard to specific candidates, 52 percent of Americans would like Democrats to control the Congress while 33 percent would prefer Republicans.
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--The Editors