I've taken some time to reflect on the Ask the Speaker session from earlier this morning. While I didn't expect Speaker Pelosi to knock my socks off, I did expect SOMETHING from her. I left feeling like I got nothing.
Many of the questions posed to Pelosi revolved around accountability and the lack thereof during the past two years. Time and again Pelosi returned to the idea of electing more Democrats in the House and Senate and electing Obama as President as the remedy. While I obviously stand with her in my desire to elect more Democrats, I couldn't help but feeling that she was laying these failings at OUR feet, that WE were to blame.
Her basic argument was this - Leadership in Congress did what it could given its numbers, but if WE had only gotten more Democrats elected they could have done more. While that may BE true, it doesn't FEEL true. Now I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of "truthiness," but there is something compelling about feeling that our concerns are being heard and acted upon...
The test of leadership is standing up for what is right even when the numbers aren't in your favor. Even more galling, we're not even talking about minority views. The President's approval rating is below 30%. A vast majority of Americans oppose the war. Americans don't want their government spying on them.
If the role of Congress as a co-equal branch of the government means anything, it means exercising its powers as a check on and balance to the actions of the Executive. Recent events have shown me that Congress is unwilling to act as an effective control on an Executive branch brazenly asserting rights to an ever expanding set of powers.
The FISA vote took a set of illegal Presidential actions in direct contravention to the expressed will of Congress and made them legal. Congress has yielded to the President's arguments of inherent authority and the unitary executive. The Bush Administration's application of these theories poses the single greatest threat to the civil liberties of the American public today. And how does Congress respond? Congress not only abrogates its role as a check on the Executive, but it legislated away any meaningful role for the Judicial branch.
Justice Robert Jackson, in his concurring opinion to Youngstown Sheet & tube Co. v. Sawyer, in June 1952, wrote presciently about this.
When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.
The battles over enforcing the subpoena on Karl Rove and the contempt citations of Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers provided Congress another opportunity to refute these corrosive arguments of the Bush Administration. The failure of Congress to act on Rove's first refusal to tetsify was wrong. Congress has been given a second chance to get it right. Suing the White House over enforcement of the Bolten and Miers contempt citations is a good start. A better start would be seeing Rove in the basement cell of the Captiol.
A boy can wish, can't he...
We are badly out of equilibrium. We are left waiting for Democratic victory to expand the majorities in Congress and seat a Democrat in the White House in order to clean up the catastrophe that is the Bush Administration. But I can't help feeling that the moment to truly hold them accountable is slipping away now.
I wanted Pelosi to acknowledge my frustration. I wanted her to acknowledge that their is more that Congress can and should do before Bush leaves office. It may not be politically feasible to hold them to account, but I fear that letting this slide sets a horrible precedent that may take a generation to undo.