Foiling Rove's Strategy

Nothing would make Rove happier than to have warrantless spying and other abuses of presidential authority treated as a partisan issue of Democrats against Republicans. But they aren't. As Al Gore recently observed, "Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program." Specter told the Washington Post, "I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

One key to foiling Rove strategy is to treat government lawlessness as a nonpartisan concern. The combination of bipartisan complicity and bipartisan concern opens a new opportunity to split support for Bush's criminal activities and to build a coalition to terminate them.

This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party. Insight magazine quoted Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as saying, "I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." Before the Gonzales hearing Specter said that the spy program of his own party's President is in flat violation of the law. In a post-hearing interview with the Washington Post, Specter said of Gonzales, "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser!"

The Republican resistance is even more impressive given an Insight magazine report that Rove has threatened to put any Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who votes against the President on his blacklist, denying them political and financial support. Despite that, four of the ten Republicans on the committee, including South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, raised doubts about the legality of the NSA program.

Republican politicians are faced with contrary pulls. On the one hand they are fearful, as Rove warned them that the defection of even a few Republicans could be catastrophic for the 2006 elections. On the other hand, if the Bush Administration is crashing, they have an interest in distancing themselves from it so that they don't go down with it. Then there's always principle: Norman Ornstein, head of the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that a majority of Republicans in both houses, if polled in secret, would be concerned about the government's invasion of privacy.

Another key to foiling Rove's strategy is to focus on the fundamental issue of constitutional checks and balances on presidential power. The issue is not whether Republicans or Democrats care more about protecting Americans against terrorists; the question is who--in or out of either party--will stand up for the principles of constitutional democracy?

Conyers exemplifies what it means to articulate that frame. He told The Nation, "There is no doubt that our nation is at a constitutional crossroads, and the domestic spying scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. We can continue down the path of an out-of-control executive unwilling to account for his actions and a Congress unable to muster the will to challenge him, or we can return to a system of checks and balances, where Congress performs genuine oversight and stands up for our citizens' rights and liberties."

Such a frame both allows and requires the entire spectrum of Bush Administration criminality to be painted as part of the same picture: not just warrantless domestic spying but lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction; conducting an aggressive war in violation of international law; engaging in torture of terror suspects; outsourcing of torture through "rendition"; secret prisons; use of white phosphorus and other illegal weapons in Iraq; and multiple other violations of national and international law. These are all actions that have been conducted and justified on the basis of an antidemocratic, anticonstitutional doctrine of unlimited presidential power.

None of this would be happening without the growing public distrust of President Bush and outrage over his debacle in Iraq. They underlie the Administration's inability to keep Congress in line. They are also the primary reason Rove's plan to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 is less and less effective. But that growing alienation needs to find expression in a repudiation of those in high places who have committed and justified crimes--and an irresistible public demand that those who are supposed to hold them accountable step forward to meet their responsibilities.

Bush's retreat on Congressional oversight of NSA spying is a small step, but it demonstrates the Administration's vulnerability to a bipartisan challenge based on constitutional principles. What is at stake is not just punishing the crimes already committed by the Bush Administration but making it possible to prevent Bush and his successors from committing similar or worse offenses in the future.

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