Vox populi

Which of the three branches of government is supreme?

The traditional civics class answer is that each checks the others, creating a balanced structure. This is evasive. Obviously, if we care anything for democracy, we must admit that Congress is the only directly elected body, and its structure represents the will of the people in a much more concrete way than the one man produced by the Electoral College could hope to. This is clearly embodied in the Constitution: if the President were meant to be dominant, he, not Congress, would have the authority to make law.

The current administration believes otherwise. Based on the specious theories put forward by their courtiers, in whatever challenge to their actions, they automatically say their opponents ignore the prerogatives and duties of the executive. This is exemplified in the signing statement to the torture bill:

The executive branch shall construe [the Act] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power...

Since they leave this "authority" as vague as possible, but use it wherever possible, the effect is no different from an assertion of monarchy.*

One notes this belief linguistically in the current US attorney flap: where Congress wishes to subpoena and publicly question administration officials, Bush demands instead that they be interviewed. In this context, interviewing is what an inferior does to a superior, as when a reporter interviews a politician. They might as well propose "granting an audience" to Congress. And, of course, they reinforce this practically by proposing a format which gives the officials complete impunity to lie.

Why do we see this notion of omnipotence come? The pure grasping ambition of the current administration did not arise in a vacuum. Part of the blame may go to the positing of the Presidential election as almost a "referendum", being (despite its flaws) the only nationwide race. Today, at the conclusion of every election, all professional talkers say the choice is a "mandate" for the victor's policies to be carried out. When they say so, they are implying not just that the people are favorable to those policies, but that, in a sense, the people have already formally ratified them, and anything Congress does would be obstructive to this will. (One is reminded of Napoleon's plebiscites.)

More proximately, it grows from the general growth of executive power in this century. Unlike other historical movements that could be named, the popular revolt that led to the New Deal was championed by the President, not Congress, and in the process many new powers were arrogated to the executive. Today, the federal government has such reach that executive orders can have as much practical impact as laws, and the president has become a de facto legislator. Also, over the years, Presidents such as LBJ kept up the tendency of championing popular causes over Congress. The cause was noble, and the means were perhaps inevitable given what needed to be done, but what was then an exigency is now being elevated to a principle of unbridled rule.

Perhaps if Nixon had not been pardoned, it would have stayed in check; but he was, and today his story is repeating itself. We see Congress on the verge of issuing orders the President has declared he will openly defy. The law is clearly on the side of Congress, which deserves to be seen as an assembly of the people, no matter its flaws. But political culture revels in subserviency, and the meaning of the word "executive power," perhaps under influence from the tyrant-cult of the CEO, has been twisted to mean "absolute power."

The automatic belief in democracy needs translation from the abstract to the concrete - the truth that governance emerges from masses of representatives, arguing, maneuvering, and, yes, even cajoling. The President is the servant of the people; Congress is their voice.

*It has more legitimacy in foreign affairs issues, where they can misuse the term "commander-in-chief" for the same purpose, but the pattern exists everywhere.

EDIT: A talking point of Tony Snow's today has illustrated their ideals much more nakedly than I thought would happen:

"There's another principle, which is Congress doesn't have the legislative -- I mean oversight authority over the White House." (To CNN, 3/25)

Now, he is supposedly trying to distinguish the White House from the Justice Department, saying that Congress established the latter by a law but not the former. Even that is so much gobbledygook. But he came so close to slipping and saying "Congress doesn't have legislative authority."

(Via Daily Kos.)