John Bolton's Democratic Theory

Madison's post about President Bush's belief that the chief executive should dominate the legislative branch reminded me of an interview John Stewart did with former UN Ambassador John Bolton on the Daily Show. Here's a link to it on Crooks and Liars, since Viacom is so ridiculous about having any of its content on YouTube.

Bolton responds to Stewart's question about why he was chosen as ambassador to the UN when he disliked the UN, and Bolton says he was also involved with arms control even though he didn't like arms control, continuing, "The president ought to have people philosophically attuned to his way of thinking, and if you've got a problem with that, I would say you've got a problem with democratic theory." He also said, "The whole point of electing a president to preside over the executive branch is to give the people a choice on the direction the entire executive branch is going, and you can't pick it apart."

From a constitutionalist standpoint, the most important thing is the political regime, which is basically the set of institutional rules in place that anyone governing has to follow (ie the Constitution, generally accepted political conventions, various other laws), and not the government, that is the group of people currently in power (ie the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court). Bolton seems to disagree. For him, the regime and the government seem to be the same thing; the people elect a president to lead them, and that president should be able to do with the regime exactly what he pleases. I don't think he should be able to. I want there to be certain rules he's required to follow because I want the US to have at least some consistency in its fundamentals, like that all citizens enjoy the rights to habeas corpus and freedom of assembly and so forth. If the government were the same as the regime, the leader of the government could just say, "And henceforth, no more freedom of assembly!" And what recourse would anyone have, if the lawmaker made his own rules? It might sound a bit anti-democratic (or more precisely, anti-republican; neither capitalized) to oppose that idea, and to some extent it is, but ours is a constitutional democracy, meaning that while we have a democracy, it's tempered by requiring it to stay within the bounds of a constitution.

Bush's general flippancy about going against conventional norm and even committing what seem like obviously anti-Constitutional acts suggests that Bolton's assertion that the president should have such absolute control is just a part of a larger democratic theory advanced by President Bush. Looking at the president's record of warrantless wire tapping, the Military Commissions Act, and the refusal to be accountable to Congress and to the American people, it seems clear that he would like to put himself and his government above the rules. And this is because, if we are to believe Bolton, this is a part of "democratic theory."

Also, even just in democratic theory, Bolton's assertion that the president should be free from any controls is problematic. The American people have moved steadily away from Bush and his ideas, so much so that the last Congressional elections amounted to the worst defeat any political party has suffered in American history; the president's approval ratings have even occasionally dipped below those of Nixon. Clearly, if this were a pure democracy and not a constitutional one, Bush would be out. But it's not a pure democracy, we have rules, and while the president seems more than happy to abide by the rule that says each presidential term is four years long, he's perfectly at home disregarding various rules, like the rule that requires authorities to seek warrants in order to search.

Bolton's position manages to seem ultra-democratic (or ultra-republican), in that he wants the person elected president to be able to carry out the wishes of the people who elected him in any way he sees fit, and at the same time semi-monarchical, because it involves a unitary chief executive given absolute power over everything in his political domain. It sounds so strange to me for a former member of an administration that has done more to combat democracy in America than any US president in my lifetime (if not in history) to suggest that his opponents have a "problem with democratic theory." We don't; we have a problem with the Bush Administration's perversion of it.