Bush Presidency II, or Bush Regency I? By: Robert S. Carney Jr. 3/13/00 |
When our nation was founded there was widespread opposition to the idea of ever having a monarchy in the U.S. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no Federal executive branch at all. A kind of an executive Regency (the executive branch to be a committee) was briefly discussed at the Constitutional Convention. It was rejected in favor of having a national leader -- one person who would hold the office of chief executive, and who would be the head of the executive branch.
In the Bush campaign, there are serious elements of an emerging executive Regency government -- with bad implications for our Constitutional democracy.
The Bush financial campaign is centered on the "Pioneers", a group of supporters who have each "bundled" (organized or collected) contributions of $100,000 or more for the Bush campaign. Newsweek reports the campaign has assigned "tracking codes", representing specific trade association affiliations. If Candidate Bush becomes President Bush, he may not have all the answers for the challenges we face, but he will know, by industry group, who paid for his election, and he will know personally the "Pioneers" who organized it.
President Truman used to say "the buck stops here." Will a next-generation President Bush, inexperienced, untested, in many ways unknown, be able to stop seventy million campaign bucks (still counting) -- and the interests they represent? What will it mean for our institutions of Constitutional government to have a President who owes his election, and most of his career, to such an explicit financial Regency?
From Watergate to 1992, individual contributions to Presidential primary campaigns were $1,000 or less, and general election campaigns were fully paid for with public campaign funding. From 1976 to 1992, no President had a basis for associating specific individuals with specific large contributions to benefit their campaign.
However, in the 1996 campaign, both President Clinton and vice-President Gore devoted significant amounts of time to face-to-face meetings with big ($50,000 and more) "soft money" contributors. The explicit association of specific people with big campaign contributions, by President Clinton and vice-President Gore in 1996, and by the Bush 2000 campaign, is a fundamental difference from previous Presidential elections. This isn't a difference in degree -- it's a difference in kind. With bundling and industry tracking codes, the Bush Pioneers are turning Presidential primary campaign financing into something that is analogous in structure to pyramid marketing. In this multi-tiered Presidential campaign contribution system, bundlers who get in on the ground floor can be seen by a Presidential candidate as speaking for an industry group.
This multi-level, bundled-by-industry financing system is at the heart of an emerging Regency Presidency. Let's consider briefly two characteristics of a Regency Presidency, and two specific problems for Constitutional democracy.
1. The President as Head of State. In modern England, the Monarchy performs ceremonial functions of government, but doesn't have real political power. In America, the ability of a President to hold and exercise real political power depends on his ability to personally inspire both trust and confidence. When unscripted, candidate Bush is a weak speaker, who does not inspire confidence by the clarity of his thinking and his mastery of issues. A stated theme of Bush's campaign is that he will get good people, the right people -- his people -- into the government. An unstated theme is that these people will run the executive branch. Candidate Bush isn't running for President -- he's running for Head of State, and pledging that he will not be an embarrassment. This approaches a declaration of his personal intent to abdicate the substance of the office of President, even before being elected.
2. The executive branch is now a base of operation for the Regents. In this new paradigm, the President is the appointer-in-chief, who places Regents in executive positions. These Regents can, and will, use the power of the executive to promote their own agenda through the executive branch at the industry level. If it stayed at the industry level, with the executive giving a little tilt benefiting the Regent President's industry-sector backers, the Regency Presidency would still be relatively benign. However, with a large group of faceless Regents, consisting of individuals who came from specific corporations and will go back to specific corporations, there is a great danger that the Regents will steer Federal benefits directly to specific corporations.
There are two fundamental dangers to our Constitutional democracy from this kind of a Regency Presidency. First, with this kind of a system, the executive branch is put in direct competition not just with the policy agenda set by Congress, but directly with the function of Congress as a legislative body. By using various executive powers and prerogatives, the executive branch can have such a decisive effect in shaping the effect of Federal spending and policies that the question arises: who is legislating, the Congress or the executive branch? Second, because of the enormous across the board impact of Federal spending and policies on the economy, if the Presidency comes to be controlled by a financial Regency, there will be overwhelming pressure on individuals and corporations in the private sector to either participate in the system, or face a significant, permanent competitive disadvantage. This will further entrench big money contributions as the driving engine of our political system. In short, a Regency Presidency threatens to transform the executive branch into both a quasi-legislature, and a spoils system.
Regency and regenerate are closely related words. Historical Regencies have governed while a royal line regenerated, yielding a new monarch of age to govern. In America, our Constitutional Federal government is supposed to regenerate every four years. A Regency Presidency is not a regeneration -- it's a degeneration of Constitutional government.
Copyright © 2000, Robert S. Carney Jr., 4232 Colfax Ave. So., Minneapolis, MN 55409. All rights reserved.