The Royal Republicans

Clay Risen takes the measure of the Bush Administration in the New Republic, "A Matter of Trust" :

It's tempting to watch today's Senate Banking Committee hearings, with Democrats and Republicans alike tearing into Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and feel pangs of sorrow for the beleaguered duo. There to defend the administration's $700 billion rescue plan for the nation's debt markets, they faced withering charges of having cobbled together an "ad hoc" (in the words of Alabama Republican Richard Shelby) three-page proposal that was "stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail" (Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd). Paulson could only play defense: Of course it's short on details--that's what we're here for, he told them. Oversight and other details were "the role of Congress." To think otherwise would be "presumptuous."

That's nice of him. But wait ... let's remember with whom we're dealing here.

It's hard to watch the tragicomedy unfolding on the Hill and not see the chickens coming home to roost for an administration that seems to wake up every morning with new ways to be "presumptuous"--toward Congress, taxpayers, foreign leaders, and the Constitution. To be fair, Hank Paulson probably does believe that time and decisiveness are of the essence, and I'm willing to allow that he means it when he says, "I hate the fact that we have to do it, but it's better than the alternative." But, in a perfect distillation of the mindset of the Bush administration, his original bailout plan read, "The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this act ... without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts."

Such brazenness is the norm for the administration. Remember, to take just two examples, when it forced Democrats to accept both the Iraq War resolution and the anti-labor rovisions in legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, on penalty of seeming weak on national defense? It's the same thing here--that it can use the rhetoric of crisis to force through a plan granting the executive even more powers. If Bush's power-grabbing tendencies were just for his own political sake, it would be hard to see the worth in making a push this late in the game. The Paulson plan shows clearly that for the Bush team, executive power is more than just political; it's ideological. They really do believe that the executive, whoever it is, should have unchecked power over the economy, in the same way they have pushed for unchecked power over homeland security and the war in Iraq.

It's funny (sad, not ha-ha) how all these good red-blooded patriotic Republicans, if pressed, will confess to some vestigial memory from junior-high civics that the American Revolution was fought over "no taxation without representation"; and of course they are very, very proud, even today, that we detached ourselves from a king in order to rule ourselves. (Cue up tear-inducing patriotic theme music in the background here.) If asked, they would all deny with various and sundry oaths that "the king can do no wrong" has any validity whatsoever in fact or philosophy.

And yet all these millions of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth little-d democrats fall down in blind obeisance anytime His Nibs #43 breathes a word: prostrating themselves and begging for more.

Ruthless arrogance gorging itself on unquestioning ignorance and utterly blind faith in the divine right of the Presidency: that is the Republican Party of the 21st century. And for this filthy perversion of all that is truly sacred about America, the trusting masses offer up unstintingly their lives, their fortunes, and their sons and daughters. But for what, exactly?

This must not continue. It shall not stand.