Submitted to a Candid World

Epoch fail.

The Republican Party spent the last eight years aggrandizing the office of the Presidency, and telling anyone who would listen – especially incredulous courts – that no force, whether judicial or legislative, could restrain its power in certain key areas of policymaking. Ironically, the Bush Administration’s “go-it-alone” approach to lawmaking led to several cataclysmic policy defeats (the latest being Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. ___ (2008)), and as Bush prepares to leave office to the jeers of a wrongéd country, the theory of the “unitary executive” lies objectively dead at his feet.

Of course, little things like “facts” and “the law” have never stopped right-wing pundits (either on talk radio or the less-evolved areas of the internet) from insisting on the vitality of the unilateral, “imperial” presidency. No: it took the possibility of a Democrat in the Oval Office to do that.

As I predicted last week, elements of the conservative leadership – Andy Schlafly ((Schlafly classily took a metaphor out of context to imply that an Obama staffer thought of the President as a “ruler”: “Hopefully Obama will read about his limited powers in the Constitution before he tries to ‘rule.’”)) and Chuck Norris (!) ((Norris’ other substantive points, if you have the stomach to read more about him, are ably dissected by “Big Dumb Chimp,” here.)) – are hard at work rewriting their vision of the Presidency, casting it as the weaker of the coordinate branches, an office honor-bound to forge bipartisan solutions. Both call for moderation, and both couch their pleas in terms of objective, institutional norms: to Schlafly and Norris, either the Constitution, or some ethereal sense of executive honor, or possibly both, will affirmatively require Obama to govern from the center.

To a certain extent, I agree with their pleas for mercy. Just as Bush should have done, Obama would do well to govern from the center. Aside from the fact that partisan governance would only further wound an already bitterly divided nation, there’s a degree of honor in the magnanimous act of showing mercy to a defeated foe. So let me be clear: I, too, hope that Barack Obama will govern from the center.

But I flatly reject the idea that Obama can be bound by the right-wing of the Republican Party to spurn partisanship. We Democrats – indeed, we Democrats and moderates – have been forced for the better part of a decade to endure the sneering disregard of an administration that cared not for any ideas other than their own, that manipulated both science and the Constitution to fit their warped & tortured goals, and that openly scorned the few brave politicians who, in the depths of this partisan hell, had the guts to stand up to a truly overbearing President. To be lectured about the merits of bipartisanship and constitutional values by an ideology that subborns both to its own agenda is the pinnacle of farce. To the Republican Party, apparently, honor, cooperation, and unity are only significant in defeat. No: with a stunning electoral mandate unmatched since Clinton, and a popular mandate unmatched since Bush I, the most President-Elect Obama owes the Republican Party, pursuant to its own rubric of presidential power and constitutionalism, is a speedy death.

Perhaps the Republican Party now realizes that its own strained reading of the Constitution, and its own inability to actually put “country first” rather than “agenda first,” were in error. If that’s the case, I have yet to see any indication. The speed with which both John McCain and Sarah Palin played the same tired old culture war cards belies the idea that the GOP has really gotten over itself. Make no mistake, Obama should – and will – govern from the center. But it’s not because the Republican Party deserves any better than to be sidelined, marginalized, and branded “unpatriotic.” It’s because America deserves better than another eight years of partisan politics. Bipartisanship should matter more – not less – when your party is in power. The Republican Party would do well to learn as much.

And, to Chuck Norris: the next time you try to lecture the Democrats on the constitutional limits of presidential power, not even your roundhouse kick will save you. I’m coming for you with copies of Boumediene, Hamdi, Hamdan, Rasul, etc., all rolled up into one giant paper bat.