Bush Is Bad For Democracy

TNR's Jonathan Chait explains why. I'm having a very difficult time choosing excerpts, since the entire article is absolutely golden. Make do with this, and then read the rest:

Democracies are also characterized by limits on the use of government power to ensconce the ruling party. Indeed, limits on such abuses are a key determinant of a democracy's strength. This is why we don't allow the president to, say, force federal employees to donate to his campaign, or sic the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on his critics. If the incumbent could turn the entire government into an apparatus of his political party, then dislodging incumbents would become prohibitively difficult. That's precisely what happens in weak democracies--classic "one-and-a-half party" states like Singapore and Paraguay--where ruling parties can hold power for decades despite superficially free elections.

But, if democracy requires a distinction between the interests of the government and the interests of the party that happens to run it, Bush and his allies have little regard for such discrimination. Bush's use of the Department of Health and Human Services to fund propaganda on behalf of its Medicare bill was not an isolated instance. After cutting taxes in 2001, the IRS mailed out promotional notices to the public, gushing, "We are pleased to inform you that the United States Congress passed--and President George W. Bush signed into law--the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which provides long-term tax relief for all Americans who pay income taxes." (Larry Noble of the Center for Responsive Politics told the Times, "I've never heard of anything like this, certainly not from the IRS, certainly not with this rah-rah tone. It's outrageous.") When the checks did arrive, they were helpfully emblazoned with Bush's catchphrase, "Tax relief for America's workers."

The Bush administration has been just as brazen about misusing its powers over state secrecy. While the White House has restricted access to vast swaths of material--even classifying decades-old documents that had never previously been classified--it has been extravagantly liberal in releasing information that suits Bush's partisan interests (see "Secrets and Lies," page 7). In 2002, Bush embarrassed his predecessor by declassifying portions of the transcript of a conversation in which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak asked Bill Clinton to pardon fugitive tax-evader Marc Rich. When Clinton asked Bush to declassify the rest of the transcript, arguing that additional context would make him look better, the White House refused. This spring, the administration declassified a steady stream of memos and briefings all for the purpose of rebutting criticisms raised by the 9/11 Commission. (For instance, it declassified a 1995 memo by Commission member and former Clinton Justice Department official Jamie Gorelick in an attempt to embarrass her.) "Bush is the first president since Richard Nixon to try to brandish declassification as a political weapon," concluded John Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, in an article for TNR online.