Why We Need a Commission on Presidential Power (American Prospect)

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Why We Need a Commission on Presidential Power

We should not look upon presidential lawlessness as if it were an odd aberration of the Bush years.


Bruce Ackerman | March 26, 2009 | web only


President Barack Obama started strong by announcing the end of torture and the closing of Guantánamo, but he has recently taken a more equivocal attitude toward the Bush constitutional legacy. While rejecting his predecessor's extreme claims, he continues to assert the presidential power to hold terrorists without trial and to keep state secrets from the courts. And he has already issued his first signing statement denouncing a few provisions of the stimulus package as unconstitutionally limiting his executive prerogatives.

These decisions have unleashed a flood of anxious commentary about Obama's ultimate intentions. But the discussion has only served to divert public attention from the real question confronting the new administration. Barack Obama is no George W. Bush -- he will indeed cut back substantially on unilateral assertions of power. The big question is whether he will take effective steps to prevent the next president from reversing course yet again and using the precedents of the Bush years as a springboard for even more extreme assertions of executive authority.

Anything Obama does through executive order can be reversed by the next president through a countervailing executive order. The president's real challenge is to design a thoughtful process through which he could lead Congress to pass landmark legislation that would decisively repudiate the unilateralism of the Bush years.

The first step is to create a presidential commission on presidential power. Like great commissions of the past, it should include leading members of Congress and engage in a year-long process of deliberation. It should propose a series of landmark statutes that reinvigorate the founding principles of checks and balances. This would prepare the way for a serious collaborative effort between the president and Congress to enact realistic limitations into law before the next presidential election.

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http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_we_need_a_commission_on_presidential_power