Hirsh on the Decline of U.S. Power

Michael Hirsh has an excellent piece in the forthcoming Newsweek, courtesy of MSNBC. Money quote:

Most of what has happened over the last seven years is the result of strategic misconceptions, awful policy decisions, and botched opportunities for leadership by the major players in Washington. What happened to America wasn't natural, it was almost entirely self-inflicted.

The issue goes way beyond Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. U.S. government literally broke down during the Bush years. The interagency process was destroyed as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld set up what was effectively a "black" alternative government (the veep's shadow national security council, and Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon). The White House treated its coequal branch, Congress, like an interloper (to the annoyance of Republicans as well as Democrats). Junk science infected the policy-making apparatus on key issues of importance to our allies in Europe and Asia, like global warming. Junk legal reasoning by White House and Justice Department lawyers was used to publicly justify torture, decimating our once high moral stature around the world. Junk economics—an excess of free-market fervor—infected the Federal Reserve and other regulators, who slumbered while Wall Street ran amok selling fraudulent mortgage securities to foreign markets. Congress went to sleep while the administration ran up record deficits. (The fallout from the subprime debacle and budget imbalance has cost us as much prestige in the economic sphere as Iraq has cost us in the foreign policy arena.) The Department of Homeland Security, misconceived and oversized even at its birth, grew into an unmanageable monstrosity, leading directly to the disaster of the Hurricane Katrina response.

Hirsh (correctly) lays some of the blame for this on the doorstep of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Republicans walked in lockstep, writing whatever legislation the president wanted, allowing President Bush to neglect his veto pen until well into his second term. Perhaps worse, the Democrats, afraid of President Bush and the Republicans playing the patriotism card (see Cleland, Max) for even the slightest challenge, didn't seriously question Bush's policies until his approval ratings were clearly on the decline.

Both parties allowed Bush to walk all over the legislative branch, giving rise to the overpowered executive branch that now needs to be dealt with before irrevocable harm is done to constitutional rights such as habeas corpus, the right to an attorney, the right to a fair and speedy trial before a jury of one's peers, etc., etc., etc. Violence has been done to these rights, and it will be up to the next president to repair the damage the current administration has caused. Hopefully, Congress will be more helpful than it has been the last eight years.