Pulitzer, McKinley, and Bush
Several commentators have drawn parallels between Dubya and the Iraq War, on the one hand, and McKinley and the Spanish-American War, on the other.
In doing some research on Joseph Pulitzer, I came across an interesting piece he wrote for The North American Review entitled "Has Congress Abdicated?" (Vol. 169, Dec. 1899, pp. 885-893). In it he argues that Congress, by abdicating its war declaration powers to the President, severely damaged the constitutional system of checks and balances, thereby threatening the future existence of the Republic.
What I found remarkable was how relevant his perspective is to our own political situation.
Consider, for example, the two forces unforseen by the framers of the Constitution that he blames for the undue expansion of Executive power:
The first is party spirit. The President has become the head of a party. He is a party chief as well as the Chief Executive of the Government. No prerogative conferred upon him by the Constitution is so potent as this. It arrays behind him, if he be a shrewd politician -- as Mr. McKinley is -- the forces of party organization, party discipline, party loyalty and party rewards. We saw in the recent elections how "loyalty to the flag" was made synonymous with loyalty to the President. No man in Congress, no ambitious politician anywhere, can oppose the President's policy without "going against his party." And to go against the party, whenever the President chooses to enter upon a war of "criminal agression," is, in the view of the party organs and orators, to commit treason.
What all this means in ostracism and abuse the very few Republican Senators and Representatives who have had the courage to oppose the President's progressive militarism have learned to their cost.
[snip]
The other and allied force which has gradually made the President the master of Congress is the power of patronage. This was unknown to the earlier Presidents, or at least was not employed by them. Such an attempt as Mr. McKinley has successfully made to sap the independence and to influence the course of Senators and Representatives by honorary appointments and profitable patronage would have been vigorously resented in earlier Congresses and have aroused the indignation of the people.
Second, consider the interesting and salutary suggestion he makes for reform:
A Constitutional amendment extending the President's term to six years and making him ineligible to re-election.
If this were done we should no longer see the President beginning on the very first day of his term to plan and work for a second term. We should not see our Presidents indulging in the menace of a foreign war to make capital for re-election, as President Harrison did in the Chili affair and President Cleveland did in the Venezuelan incident, or actually leading the country into a war of conquest and "empire," as Mr. McKinley has done in the Philippines. A single term for the Executive, as was the original intention of the Constitutional Convention, would limit the ambition of the President and remove the temptation, which is now apparently irresistible, to use his power for personal and partisan ends.
He also suggests a complete reform of the civil-service system to eliminate the power gained by McKinley's use of political patronage. A similar point could be made nowadays against the privatization of government agencies and functions.
Pulitzer concludes:
When the people's representatives prefer patronage to power and party servitude to conscience -- when they obey their party boss instead of asserting their own authority -- Congress has failed as a check upon the Executive and is no longer the guardian of popular liberty. The genius of republican institutions requires that Congress shall direct, guide, control the Executive. But today the President directs, guides, controls Congress.
True in 1899.
True in 2005.
12:01:47 AM 
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