[Marxism] Harvey Hamilton, er, Mansfield on Executive Power

["Michael Hoover" <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

[[weekly standard is billy kristol's (irving's son) rag, harvey mansfield has
essentially been at harvard ever since he stepped foot on campus over
50 years ago, he considers himself to be one of the beleaguered 
conservatives in academia and fancies identifying himself as the only
conservative poli sci guy at liberal harvard (the institution from where
which both his undergrad and grad degrees are from and where he has
been poli sci faculty member since early '60s, check out his reference to/
use of hamilton's federalist #70]]... mh

The Law and the President
In a national emergency, who you gonna call?
by Harvey Mansfield
Weekly Standard 01/16/2006

EMERGENCY POWER FOR SUCH UNDERHANDED activities as spying makes 
Americans uncomfortable and upset. Even those who do not suffer from 
squeamish distaste for self-defense, and do not mind getting tough when 
necessary, feel uneasy. A republic like ours is always more at ease in 
dealing with criminals than with enemies. Criminals violate the law, and 
the law can be vindicated with police, prosecutors, juries, and judges who 
stay within the law: At least for the most part, the law vindicates itself. 
Enemies, however, not merely violate but oppose the law. They oppose 
our law and want to replace it with theirs. To counter enemies, a republic 
must have and use force adequate to a greater threat than comes from 
criminals, who may be quite patriotic if not public-spirited, and have 
nothing against the law when applied to others besides themselves. But 
enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force.

This home truth gets little recognition from critics of the Bush 
administration's 
surveillance activities in the war on terror. Some of its defenders, too, seem 
unaware of the full extent to which the Constitution addresses the problems 
we face today and how useful and relevant its principles prove to be.

One can begin from the fact that the American Constitution made the first 
republic with a strong executive. A strong executive is one that is not 
confined to executing the laws but has extra-legal powers such as commanding 
the military, making treaties (and carrying on foreign policy), and pardoning 
the convicted, not to mention a veto of legislation. To confirm the extra-legal 
character of the presidency, the Constitution has him take an oath not to 
execute the laws but to execute the office of president, which is larger.

Thus it is wrong to accuse President Bush of acting illegally in the 
surveillance of 
possible enemies, as if that were a crime and legality is all that matters. 
This is 
simplistic, small-r republican thinking of the kind that our Constitution 
surpassed 
when it constructed a strong executive. The Constitution took seriously a 
difficulty in the rule of law that the republican tradition before 1787 had 
slighted. 
The difficulty is obvious enough, but republicans tend to overlook it or 
minimize it 
because they believe, as republicans, that power is safer in the hands of many 
than 
in those of one or a few. Power is more surely in the hands of many when 
exercised 
in the form of law--"standing rules," as opposed to arbitrary decree. Republics 
tend to 
believe in the rule of law and hence to favor legislative power over executive.

Yet the rule of law is not enough to run a government. Any set of standing 
rules is 
liable to encounter an emergency requiring an exception from the rule or an 
improvised response when no rule exists. In Machiavelli's terms, ordinary power 
needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, 
using wise discretion. "Necessity knows no law" is a maxim everyone admits, and 
takes advantage of, when in need. Small-r republicans especially are reluctant 
to 
accept it because they see that wise discretion opens the door to unwise 
discretion. 
But there is no way to draw a line between the wise and the unwise without 
making 
a law (or something like it) and thus returning to the inflexibility of the 
rule of law. 
We need both the rule of law and the power to escape it--and that twofold need 
is 
just what the Constitution provides for.

In the Constitution executive power represents necessity in the form of 
response to 
emergencies. It anticipates that events will occur or situations will arise 
that we 
cannot anticipate through our laws; it anticipates what we cannot anticipate. 
The 
legislative and the judicial powers (and the executive insofar as it merely 
executes 
laws) represent our choices as they have been fixed in law, our foresight as 
far as it 
goes. The Constitution mixes choice and necessity, reflecting our desire for 
self-
government (which takes effect in our legislation) and our recognition of the 
limitations of human foresight and the imperfection of human laws. These are 
opposite principles made into opposing elements of our government, yet they are 
also complementary. Each needs the other, and the constitutional system makes 
each 
in some degree aware of the other.

Yet the legislature and the judiciary will of course be partial to the rule of 
law, and 
the executive partial to the need for discretion. The Constitution maintains 
both 
opposite principles by arranging for an interested party or parties to support 
that 
principle in exercising its power. It does not try to teach the overall truth 
to all 
parties, as if it were possible to have the legislature and judiciary demurely 
defer to 
the executive when discretion is needed, and the reverse when the rule of law 
rightly asserts itself. No, there will be conflict between discretion and the 
rule of law, 
each party aware of the other principle but more convinced by its own.

That is why the two principles do not coincide with the differences between 
liberals 
and conservatives, or Democrats and Republicans. Democrats uphold the rule of 
law 
now, because as things stand that is all they can hope for. When they held the 
presidency with Bill Clinton, it was they, during the impeachment trial, who 
called 
for pardon and the Republicans holding Congress who tried manfully to vindicate 
the 
rule of law by punishing a president who admitted he had violated the law.

In combining law and discretion, the Framers of the Constitution made a 
deliberate 
departure from the sorry history of previous republics that alternated between 
anarchy and tyranny. The Federalist Papers, the most authoritative source for 
understanding the thinking of the Framers, make it clear that republicans had 
gone 
astray because they had overconfidently ignored the necessities that all 
governments 
face and had tried to wish away the advantages of size, power, flexibility, 
foresight, 
and prudence that monarchies may offer. In rejecting monarchy because it was 
unsafe, 
republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective. The Framers made a 
strong 
executive in order to have both power and security, and they took note of 
emergency 
occasions when more power gives more security.

Separation of powers was a republican invention of the 17th century, but the 
Framers 
improved it when they strengthened the executive. They enabled the executive to 
act independently of the legislature and not merely serve as its agent in 
executing the 
laws. In the current dispute over executive surveillance of possible 
terrorists, those 
arguing that the executive should be subject to checks and balances are wrong 
to say 
or imply that the president may be checked in the sense of stopped. The 
president 
can be held accountable and made responsible, but if he could be stopped, the 
Constitution would lack any sure means of emergency action. Emergency action of 
this kind may be illegal but it is not unconstitutional; or, since the 
Constitution is a 
law, it is not illegal under the Constitution.

To be held responsible, the executive must be able to act independently. To the 
extent that he depends on others to act, as in getting a law passed, 
responsibility 
is distributed to others and it is no longer clear who precisely is 
responsible. A 
president can evade responsibility by consulting with others and then, if 
something 
goes wrong, put the blame on them. This is one of the oldest tricks in the 
book, 
and canny politicians will often refuse to be consulted lest they get the blame 
for 
someone else's mistake and lose the ability to lay blame themselves. To be sure 
of 
responsibility you must fix it on one person; true responsibility is sole 
responsibility. 
That is why, under our republican Constitution, the people, when they want to 
hold 
the whole government responsible, end up holding the president responsible.

The Federalist tells us that a republican constitution needs energy and 
stability, terms 
taken from physics to designate discretion and law. Energy has its place in the 
executive, and the foremost guarantee of energy is "unity" (Federalist 70), 
meaning 
unity in one person as opposed to a committee or a council. Unity facilitates 
"decision, 
activity, secrecy, and dispatch." Note secrecy in this list. Secrecy is 
necessary to 
government yet almost incompatible with the rule of law (the exception being 
when 
congressional committees meet in "executive," i.e. secret, session). Yet 
secrecy is 
compatible with responsibility because, when one person is responsible, it does 
not 
matter how he arrives at his decision. To blame or reward him, one does not 
have to 
enter into "the secret springs of the transaction," as would be necessary if 
responsibility 
were shared.

In the present administration, we do not really need to know the sort of 
secrets we learn 
from reporters like Bob Woodward. We do not need to know, for example, how 
important Vice President Cheney is; we can praise or blame President Bush for 
choosing to 
be advised by him. With one person in charge we can have both secrecy and 
responsibility. 
Here we have the reason that American society, in imitation of American 
government, 
makes so much use of one-man rule. In all of its institutions--corporations, 
unions, sports 
teams, gangs, and universities--our republic likes to place power in the hands 
of one person, 
and then hold him responsible. That is our republican maxim, quite different 
from the 
traditional one that sees safety in numbers.

>From this standpoint the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a 
>mistake. That law 
makes surveillance subject to approval by a secret court of judges, who are 
thereby placed 
in a false position. If they give approval readily, they go against their 
profession as judges 
and fail to give judicious consideration to each case. Yet if they think as 
judges in terms of 
criminals rather than enemies, that may do harm to the country. We note that 
President 
Bush's critics do not want him to stop surveillance; they just want him to do 
it legally--as if 
legality could guarantee success and morality could make our enemies give up.

Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law to the fore 
and forgets to 
consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply. But 
it is 
precisely difficult situations that we should think about and counsels of 
perfection that we 
should avoid. Otherwise we end up admitting truth with a bad conscience, as did 
John 
McCain recently, when after denouncing the use of torture, he suddenly said on 
the 
contrary: "You do what you have to do." In this way you have morality and the 
rule of law 
on one side and necessity on the other. But isn't there a legal and a moral way 
to deal with 
necessity? Our Constitution, properly understood, shows that there is. We need 
to take 
better stock of our own achievements.

Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of government at Harvard.

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