The Editor's Desk

Things might be about to get even nastier than usual between the White House and Congress, as the administration declares it will not comply with a subpoena for information in their investigations regarding the controversies surrounding the Justice Department, citing executive privilege.

It’s a complicated, nuanced issue, despite the appearance of a typical government squabble over who wears the pants in Washngton. The White House argues that it has the right to receive “candid and unfettered advice and open discussions and deliberations occur among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch” in order to perform his duties.

To put this in terms for those who follow local government, what he’s talking about is the right to negotiate in private over issues and not have to publicly reveal his hand. City Council, for example, is permitted to have closed-door sessions about certain types of legal and contract negotiations, because if the conversations happened in public, they would lose all their bargaining power. it would be like playing poker with all your cards face up on the table.

However, the problem here is that there’s no oversight. The White House is demanding the right to decide what falls under this privilege. It would be like City Council rewriting the state’s Brown Act to cover whatever it wants to cover (not that most city councils wouldn’t love to be able to do this).

This has become a very important hallmark for the Bush Administration, and I believe that history will ultimately show these past seven years as an object lesson as to why governmental separation of powers are so important. It’s not about the (D) or the (R) as such. We may think that the war in Iraq is going to be the big issue that history records (after 9/11), but I tend to think that it’s really the most visible example of a much larger problem. Congress chose to give the president a lot of power. And once power is granted to a government agent, it’s very hard to take it away again.

Or to put in a different way to those who still support the administration’s behavior: If Hillary Clinton wins election next year, would you be satisfied with her having just as much power as President George W. Bush has now? Because as it stands, she will.