And, as already indicated, this new power broker would take good advantage of expanding executive power.
Enter George W. Bush and the defining event of his presidency: 9/11. Vice President Cheney was convinced that the power of the executive had eroded in the post-Vietnam era, (though the scholarship suggests that those powers have actually been intensifying throughout the 20th century). And 9/11 gave him and his allies fertile ground to re-amass what they believe they had lost. The warrantless wiretapping, recently declared illegal, was part and parcel of one of the most controversial expansions of executive power during the Bush Presidency, advocated (ostensibly) to more effectively fight the so called "war on terror." (This expansion of executive power was by no means confined to the U.S. globally it has grown, largely as a result of the post-9/11 adaptation of international security law.)
Another means of expanding executive power (which facilitates and augments the vexing new system of power and influence of which author Janine Wedel speaks) was the use of presidential "signing statements." A signing statement is a pronouncement about a provision of a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, in which he signifies that he will not be bound by the new law. While Presidents Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton all signaled their objections, from time to time, through constitutional challenges contained in signing statements, George W. Bush increased the number of such challenges more than tenfold compared with Clinton. Bush employed the signing statement more than 1,100 times during his eight years in office.
Further, he employed them in an unprecedented way -- for the purpose of effectively curtailing the power of the legislative branch by threatening (via the challenge) to not enforce a law passed by Congress. In effect, Bush claimed to accomplish what the Supreme Court has deemed unconstitutional à ‚¬" a line item veto. Just as presidents have been afforded leeway during wartime in the interest of protecting the nation, Bush used 9/11 as justification to expand presidential powers, often keeping the legal justifications secret.
Such precedents leave an enduring legacy, which may be why in early 2007 a distinguished panel of the American Bar Association determined that the ways that signing statements were used by George W. Bush are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." The use of signing statements was also criticized by candidate Obama, who said that he would show greater restraint, once in office.
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