The President is just that, a president, not a monarch or totalitarian ruler. He is bound by the Constitution and his oath to it (remember he swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution). By breaking his oath, he is in fact committing an impeachable offense. As a matter of fact, there was a column in the New York Times recently where Alexander Haig (Nixon's Chief of Staff when he was President) declared that by admitting to authorizing the taps, Bush was admitting to an impeachable offense.
Please read this:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20060105.html
The President does not have unlimited executive authority, not even as Commander-in-Chief of the military. Our government was purposely created with power split between three branches, not concentrated in one.
Separation of powers, then, is not simply a talisman: It is the foundation of our system. James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 47, that:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
Another early American, George Nicholas, eloquently articulated the concept of "power divided" in one of his letters:
The most effectual guard which has yet been discovered against the abuse of power, is the division of it. It is our happiness to have a constitution which contains within it a sufficient limitation to the power granted by it, and also a proper division of that power. But no constitution affords any real security to liberty unless it is considered as sacred and preserved inviolate; because that security can only arise from an actual and not from a nominal limitation and division of power.
Yet it seems a nominal limitation and division of power - with real power concentrated solely in the "unitary executive" - is exactly what President Bush seeks. His signing statements make the point quite clearly, and his overt refusal to follow the laws illustrates that point: In Bush's view, there is no actual limitation or division of power; it all resides in the executive.
Thomas Paine wrote in
Common Sense:
In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.
The unitary executive doctrine conflicts with Paine's principle - one that is fundamental to our constitutional system. If Bush can ignore or evade laws, then the law is no longer king. Americans need to decide whether we are still a country of laws - and if we are, we need to decide whether a President who has determined to ignore or evade the law has not acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government.
Bottom line: the courts are the suppreme word when it comes to laws and if you don't like a law, you don't go around it, you change it and do it the democratic way.
