I just finished a book called Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches by John W. Dean. What is particularly interesting is that Dean is himself a Republican, and was a White House legal councel to Nixon. The book’s name is taken from the CNN show Cafferty Files – and that show itself is worth watching. Next to Olbermann, Cafferty is doing a great job at trying to call out the government on its authoritarianism.
Dean takes us through the workings of each of the bodies, and as his chapter titles indicate, he is basically saying that the legislative branch is ‘broken but under repair’; the executive is ‘broken and in need of repair’; and most distrubingly, the judicial which is at breaking point. In his introduction he stresses again and again how ‘process’ and ‘due process’ are important, and in fact the focal point of any action. It is this that worries him the most – that process has been abandoned in favor of a more authoritarian form of ruling, thus ‘breaking’ the government.
In his assessment of current republican behavior and of the analysis of the Bush/Cheney presidency, he stresses the old adage that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’. He makes this remarkable assessment:
Republicans seek federal power because it can help them achieve their agenda, and it also helps them in their careers. Few are driven to assist their fellow citizens, or to serve their country. It is power that attracts them; it is a tropism for authoritarian personalities, like the moth to the candle.
He explains:
Post-Watergate conservative Republicans now embrace the notion of a neo-Nixonian presidency, one that calls for a chief executive to be always wearing his commander in chief uniform, constantly strutting about flexing his muscles, and beating the other branches of government into less than constitutionally coequal status. [p.21]
While Dean uses mostly other people’s research and analysis, he also puts that research in perspective to prove his point of view as a man who was in a position to witness it himself. For example, Dean uses contributing editor Matt Taibi from the Rolling Stone – with his article entitled The Worse Congress Ever: How our national legislature has become a stable of Thieves and Perverts – in five easy steps. Dean, however, elaborates on Taibi’s five steps:
- Rule by Cabal
- Work as little as possible – and screw up what little you do
- let the president do whatever he wants
- spend, spen, spend
- line your own pockets
But by far the most revealing and of course interesting is Dean’s analysis of Cheney – otherwise known as Darth Vader [as Hillary Clinton so aptly put it!]. It confirms almost everyone’s sense of who that shadow president is, and of the dubious ‘power behind the throne’. Dean writes how Cheney, unlike the president, had extensive national security experience:
Given those realities, it has long been apparent that the man behind the curtain, the shrouded figure who has been pulling the levers and pushing the buttons that have taken this administration in so many wrong directions, was none other than Dick Cheney. his almost single-handed guidance of the American presidency seemed dazzling at first, as he quietly worked his will before many people began to realize what he was doing. [p. 77]
On the Bush/Cheney presidency, Dean quotes Princeton Historian and presidential scholar Sean Wilentz:
No previous president appears to have squandered the public’s trust more than Bush has, and no other president ..at critical moments of the Cold war – faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats … history may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the US constitution… The Bush administration – in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called ‘the legitimate authority of the presidency’ – threatens to overturn the Framers’ healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. [p.75]
Most disturbing to me was Dean’s entire chapter on how the Democrats were and are still being marginalized in spite of their ‘majority’ in Congress. He goes into details of underhanded attacks and how the Republicans managed to undermine any and all actions by the Democrats [for example the constant attacks against Clinton by Ken Starr throughout his presidency, even going as far as saying that he wonders how Clinton managed to continue with his duties in spite of such harassment].
Dean ends his book quoting ‘an old friend from the Nixon White House’ who asked him to tell his readers the following:
“Just tell your readers that you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican Party from long experience, that he knows all the key movers and shakers, and he has a bit of advice: People should not vote for any Republican, because they’re dangerous, dishonest, and self-serving. While I once believed that Governor George Wallace had it right, that there was not a dime’s worth of difference in the parties, that is no longer true. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government is truly broken, particularly in dealing with national security, and another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable.” [p. 201]
The book is a frightening and disturbing look at the makings of an authoritarian regime, as people continue to ‘trust’ their government to do what is in their best interest.
