Charles Cooke writes for National Review Online about the New York Times’ skewed take on American political history.
The New York Times‘s Charlie Savage relates the history of the imperial presidency:
Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. …
… “Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Mr. Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall.”
Got that? After a nameless and faceless phenomenon led mysteriously to “the growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch,” the presidency grew imperial only at the hands of Republicans. This imperialism began on its “upward path” under Eisenhower, it became so bad under Nixon that the other branches felt moved to do something about, it increased in severity under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and it’s now being made worse still by Donald Trump.
As for the supine nature of Congress? That’s Republicans’ fault, too. …
… This, naturally is great news for the Times‘s readers — who will now have confirmation of what they had suspected all along: That when Democratic presidents try to spend half a trillion dollars without legislative approval, or decree changes to immigration law that they had previously insisted that they were unable to make, or illegally order vaccine mandates and eviction moratoria in defiance of statute, or use the EPA to achieve aims that they could not get through Congress, or go into Libya without permission, that’s different, and it should under no circumstances be considered as part of a problematic structural change that was created by both parties, in pursuit of all manner of ideological aims, and that has been cheered on by legislators whose politics span the political spectrum.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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