This has got to be THE most revealing quote ever from George W. Bush:
I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation.
It comes from an excellent article from Elizabeth Drew called "Power Grab", in the June 22nd edition of The New York Review of Books. Ms. Drew comprehensively chronicles the myriad ways that this administration has consolidated power from the three branches of government into the Oval Office:
[The White House] has attempted to upset the balance of power among the three branches of government provided for in the Constitution; but its most aggressive and consistent assaults have been against the legislative branch: Bush has time and again said that he feels free to carry out a law as he sees fit, not as Congress wrote it. Through secrecy and contemptuous treatment of Congress, the Bush White House has made the executive branch less accountable than at any time in modern American history. And because of the complaisance of Congress, it has largely succeeded in its efforts.
Nothing much that Ms. Drew reports is new to most of us here at DailyKos. She covers the hundreds of signing statements Bush has used to ignore laws passed by Congress, Bush's ignoring the FISA court to carry out his NSA wiretapping, Gen. Hayden's invlovement in these shenanigans, and the administration's attempt to silence those who revealed that these wiretaps were being carried out.
Other than the arrogant admission by Bush that he owes no one -- especially the American people -- an explanation for his actions, what I find most interesting about Drew's article is why Congress has felt little if any need to challenge the White House:
Why have the members of Congress been so timorous in the face of the steady encroachment on their constitutional power by the executive branch? Conversations with many people in or close to Congress produced several reasons. Most members of Congress don't think in broad constitutional terms; their chief preoccupations are raising money and getting reelected. Their conversations with their constituents are about the more practical issues on voters' minds: the prices of gasoline, prescription drugs, and college tuition. Or about voters' increasing discontent with the Iraq war.
Republicans know that the President's deepening unpopularity might hurt them in the autumn elections; but, they point out, he's still a good fund-raiser and they need his help. Moreover, the Republicans are more hierarchical than the Democrats, more reverential toward their own party's president; it's unimaginable that Republicans would be as openly critical of Bush as the Democrats were of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Republicans are more disciplined about delivering their party's "talking points" to the public. Republican fund-raising is done more from the top than is the case with Democrats, and there's always the implicit threat that if a Republican isn't loyal to the president, the flow of money to their campaigns might be cut off. A Republican opponent can challenge an incumbent in a primary, in which not many people vote.
The Republicans have set up a co-dependent relationship between the Executive Branch and the Legislature that requires the Republican Senators and Representatives to become moral, ethical, and legal eunuchs in order to raise the money necessary to keep their jobs and perks.
Since Bush only deals with people from his own party and answers only to those who voted for him, of course he would believe he owes no one an explanation for his unprecedented power grab.
Read Drew's article just to remind yourselves why it is so important for us as good, patriotic Americans to put aside our bickering as Democrats and work as hard as we can to retake Congress, so we can disabuse Bush of his dry-drunk delusion he was coronated King.