Candid And Unfettered Advice

I often hear, in reference to the refusal of the White House to allow information about its advisors and its decision-making process to come to light, that "for the President to perform his constitutional duties, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice," to quote White House Counsel Fred Fielding, and that the prospect of having to testify under oath about that advice could have a chilling effect and make such advisors "reluctant to communicate openly and honestly." This rationale has been repeated so many times that reporters seem to gloss right over it on auto-pilot, like it's just some boilerplate they have to include next to station identification and the weather.

What kind of advice is the president getting that the American people need to remain ignorant of it? If there are people advising the president who are afraid of having their ideas attributed to them, I've got news for you, those people should not be influencing policy. Are there any secret signatures on the Declaration of Independence? Are there any articles of the Constitution whose validity is dependent on their authorship? Why should we, as Americans, be so respectful of the desire for privacy of those who are guiding our ship of state? It's our country, "We the people" isn't just a cute phrase, it's a guiding principle, that this representative democracy, this republic, derives its power from the people, through the people, and for the people.

I know I'm getting carried away here, but this is pretty outrageous stuff. Should we allow ourselves to be ruled by those who lack the courage of their convictions? Given that this nation was created and birthed by men and women who were willing to die, to be tortured, to give up all they had in the world for the ideas of freedom and justice for all, does it not follow that the maintenance and furtherance of the grand ideals that underpin the United States of America should be undertaken by people of similar strength of character? That the governance of this nation should be an enterprise to which one would be proud to have one's name attached?

I recognize that a good decision-maker, especially one responsible for so much, needs to have access to all available options, and sometimes must make difficult and perhaps Machiavellian choices about things. And if we're talking about information that must be kept secret to ensure the security of the country, then telling it on the mountain is not appropriate. But when we're talking about internal politics, about the basic nuts and bolts administration of national policy, such a deference to secrecy is not right, and it's certainly not our way of doing things. We the people believe in open and honest government, and those qualities are not fueled by shadows, smoke, and mirrors. If the Congress is asking the president a question, then the people represented by the Congress (that's us! you and me!) are asking the president a question, and if he is indeed upholding the ideals that he most solemnly swore to uphold, then he cannot but answer truthfully. That is a basic fact of our system of government. To do any less is un-American, and must be dealt with harshly and with all available haste.

Richard B. Cheney, I Am Calling You Out

The Vice President of the United States is saying, with a straight face, that he doesn't have to comply with an executive order (number 12958) requiring him to report on his handling of classified information because, get this, his duties as President of the Senate mean that he's not technically part of the Executive Branch.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, because the most flagrant abuser of executive privilege in modern times has just stated that it is his official legal opinion that he is not subject to the rules and regulations governing the executive branch of the U.S. federal government. It's so on. We now get to find out, courtesy of Mr. Addington's slip-up, everything that was previously denied to us under the protections afforded the Office of the Vice President by the (aggressively interpreted) notion of executive privilege.

Oh wait. Nevermind. We don't, because Dick Cheney believes himself to be above the law, and anyone who tries to remind him that he is, in fact, a public servant and thus subject to the rules and regulations governing public servants just can't seem to find a way to hold him to account. Here's an idea: CALL THE POLICE! Isn't that what you do when someone breaks the law? You call the cops? Well, it seems that someone already did. The agency responsible for monitoring compliance with the executive order in question attempted to conduct a floor-check on Cheney's office, but they were blocked by Cheney's staff. With what, tear gas and tasers? They were acting on an executive order, how were they blocked? Well, they didn't take that lying down, they called the top cop in the country, the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. You know where this is going. They still have not received a response. The Department of Justice didn't, um, you know, call them back.

Those of you who support the right to bear arms on the theory that at some point you might have to defend yourself against the abuse of power by despots foreign or domestic, YOU SHOULD BE CLEANING YOUR BARRELS RIGHT ABOUT NOW. Seriously, what's it going to take? Does Dick Cheney have to dress up like the Hamburglar and scuttle around carrying a sack labeled "Your Rights & Freedoms" before you say to yourself "Golly, I wonder if that guy should be running the country?" Here's the kicker: Cheney's office, upon noticing that there was an official government entity trying to make sure that they were obeying the law, attempted to abolish that entity. They tried to eliminate that office. Oh. My. God. How stupid do you have to be not to understand what's going on here?

Just to recap: The Vice President of the United States, Richard Bruce Cheney, is a crook. For anyone who didn't get that. He's breaking the law. Not a minor law, either, he's breaking a law that is supposed to keep him from breaking EVERY OTHER LAW ON THE BOOKS, because it governs, directly, whether he has to tell anyone what he's doing.

Now, I can't be the only person who is up in arms about this. Apparently everybody in a position to bring the hammer down is afraid of this guy. Well I'll lay it out for you pigeon-livered sons of bitches in Congress: Dick Cheney asserts the right to abduct me, send me to Syria, torture me indefinitely, and have me beaten to death and forgotten about, BUT I'M CALLING HIM OUT. What the hell are you doing about it?

A Temporary Dip In Candlepower

Well duh. I'd say most folks of even average intelligence sorted this out in 1999. But that's not who we're concerned about, right? We're concerned about those people who worry, sometimes legitimately, that someone who is too sharp, too prone to reflection, might be a bad leader. I know several people who chose Bush in the past election for that reason, because Bush was more clearly a man of action while Kerry was a peripatetic milquetoast, and with that reductive fallacy firmly in place it's not an unreasonable position.

If you read the rest of the newspaper in which Robinson's column is published, you might notice that our president, the self-styled man of action, is currently splitting his time between 11th-hour attempts to pass a clumsy facsimile of his number one legislative priority from seven years ago and unsuccessfully trying to fend off the consequences of his rash actions from four years ago, with only his disturbing penchant for secrecy and the crass chutzpah of his cabinet to defend himself. THERE IS A LESSON TO BE LEARNED HERE, FOR ANYONE WITHOUT SUFFICIENT FORESIGHT TO HAVE SEEN THIS PATHETIC SET OF EVENTS LUMBERING DOWN THE PIKE.

I know, I shouldn't berate anyone whose mind I hope to change, but any of my fellow citizens who care so little about this country that they would let New Haven's most famous town drunk play at being president for two whole terms can go to hell. I know full well who I need to fight to defend the American ideal, and they're not carrying Korans or wearing suicide belts, because freedom and the equality of man do not fear violence or difference of opinion. Fair, open government and the pursuit of the realization of the unapproached limits of human potential are not threatened by bullets, shrapnel, or the contradictory dogma born of ancient fairy tales. Justice and peace are not antagonistic to oppression and war, they are different and superior animals that need to shake off the latter pair, not just be presented as alternatives. But the perversion of these ideas through Orwellian doublespeak and the secret and gradual erosion of legal protections by someone in whom the nation's trust has been misplaced, that's dangerous.

The presidential contest that is currently idling its engines on the editorial pages of the country's newspapers is a rare and readily seizable opportunity for this country to awake from the binary electoral nightmare that has gripped it for at least a decade now, a chance for the populace to cast off the learned helplessness so expertly exploited by our twin tormentors and to firmly place the word "representative" back in front of "government" instead of "Red" or "Blue." We can't do that by tossing the top job into a crowd of vultures and standing back to see which one is cutthroat enough to seize it, we need to, as one nation, indivisible, pick an exceptional person from among our ranks and send him or her to Washington armed with our hopes and needs and shackled to our highest expectations. It is un-American to do any less, no matter how much the Republican and Democratic political consultants have lowered the bar.

American Idyll

The United States is staggeringly, ineffably huge. From geography to ideology to finance to architecture, there is only so much commonality of experience to be found. The states assert their limited sovereignty, the regional industries delineate their fiefdoms, churches, news organs, and even restaurant chains stake out their territories in the minds and municipalities of their adherents. The city mouse and the country mouse are only vaguely aware of how the other half lives.

So if one were to aspire to lead this country, to be the central, chief executive, how would one craft a message that would cut across these divisions, that would ignite the fire of support in enough people to elevate one to the top job? Because this is America, not Great Britain, there is no division between the avatar and the manager of this country. Taking the reins of power means accepting all the trappings of national cultural identity.

There is one school that takes after the Oracle at Delphi, striving mightily to keep the message vague enough that people can hear only what they want to hear. This is the path of darkness. With candidates campaigning from afar, through television and cattle-calls, carefully scripted to avoid the collective embarrassment of the entire field of contenders, there is a serious danger that the Bromide Candidate can seize the mantle of cultural identity without ever demonstrating the skills necessary for government. The catastrophe that results from this quirk of the American electoral process is evident.

So keep your eyes open, countrymen, and keep your minds sharp. If the words of a politician pass through you like a phantom, leaving no discernible trace, take that as evidence of the substance of said candidate's character. Stay vigilant against those who describe that quality as "electability," for they seek to deceive you. This is one nation, indivisible, but like the A-Team, it is our differences that make us strong. If someone comes to you claiming to bring vague, unifying ideas, cast him aside. If someone comes to you with strong ideas, the kind of vigorous thought that challenges and threatens, engage him directly and plumb the depth of his intellect, because this nation was not raised on the bending and scraping of pandering sycophants, but on the clash and conflict of new and dangerous hallucinations.