Imperial Presidency

Paris.--It is late to pile onto Bill Clinton's haircut fiasco, but an important point is being missed. Whose practices were responsible for shutting down half of Los Angeles' air traffic while Mr. Clinton's hair was expensively shorn last Tuesday?You may be sure that the president himself did not suggest that the airport be closed for his haircut. He will have said that he needed a trim and this seemed a good moment. The standard procedures of the Secret Service are what translate presidential whim into public disorder.

THE GOP-controlled Congress cried, "Stop me before I spend again!" when it voted overwhelmingly to give the presidency unprecedented power.Frustrated that they cannot garner the votes to balance the budget or to stop their own pork barrel legislation, members of Congress have decided they don't want the job anymore -- despite the fact that the Constitution puts that responsibility in their hands."

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Although long under the thumb of their rulers, Kenyan voters rebelled against their president in election results released yesterday, handing him a stinging defeat in a referendum on revamping the constitution. President Mwai Kibaki had staked his reputation on the plebiscite held Monday, and the rejection of it by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent was widely seen as a vote of no confidence in his three-year-old administration. "The people have triumphed," said Uhuru Kenyatta, an opposition leader who had campaigned against Kibaki's proposal.

In a major vote that no one seems to be talking about, the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to defund and end the war in Libya, unless President Barack Obama decides to follow the War Powers Act -- which requires Obama to get congressional approval within 60 days of launching a military action.  The amendment, introduced by U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), to a military funding bill passed convincingly, by a vote of 248-163.  "Why is this amendment necessary?"

Is Congress in trouble? Four veterans of Capitol Hill, with 70 years of experience among them, think there is no question that the institution is a bureaucratic and procedural mess.Consider these astounding figures:* Since 1947, congressional staff has increased six-fold, from 2,000 employees to 12,000.* During the same period, the number of committees has increased eight-fold, from 38 to almost 300. Congressional alarm-ringers says the system is out of control, "creating a maze of overlapping jurisdictions and spreading members too thin."

JAMES K. POLK was the first president to snooker the U.S. into a war. In 1846, he sent troops into disputed territory to goad Mexico into attacking. It worked. Congress, which he'd duped, had no choice except to declare war. Polk captured his prize -- California and the rest of what is now our Southwest.Thus the second U.S. war of conquest. The first: grabbing the country from its original residents, who, in a geographic stupor, we called Indians. It also was our second under the Constitution (the poorly waged business of 1812 having preceded it)

The imperial presidency that George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have worked so hard to protect and strengthen seems to be crumbling around them. The broad mantle of executive authority Mr. Bush assumed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is being shredded piece by piece, largely as a result of public opposition to the Iraq war - an overreach that vastly undermined confidence in unchecked presidential power. Two striking examples occurred almost simultaneously last week: The Bush administration was forced to retreat after the FBI was revealed to be abusing - and botching - its authority to secretly demand personal records of Americans, and a band of fired U.S. attorneys blew the whistle on political influence in the prosecutorial process.

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have now worked out a clever routine that achieves what official diplomacy cannot. In North Korea, it was avoidance of war by bribing the Pyongyang regime to give up its nuclear weapons potential. In Haiti, it was saving face for the junta before sending its generals on their way. Now, in Bosnia, Mr. Carter has pulled off a delicate cease-fire that offers Mr. Clinton cover for a major policy retreat.In each instance, White House and State Department officials have leaked the message that they consider Mr. Carter an annoying and naive meddler in affairs that require the expertise of professionals.

POLICY HOW THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY HIJACKED THE CONSTITUTION By Peter Irons. Metropolitan Books. 308 pages. Conservative judicial scholars love the Founding Fathers, and they have created a legal theory called "originalism" in which the founders' words essentially are carved in stone. If you're stuck with a complicated legal question, just think about what James Madison would do. "The Constitution means what the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention and of the state ratifying conventions understood it to mean; not what we judges think it should mean," Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said in a 2001 speech.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER ANDTHE MODERN PRESIDENTS:THE POLITICS OF LEADERSHIPFROM ROOSEVELTTO REAGAN.Richard E. Neustadt.Free Press.371 pages. $22.95. Thirty years after his much acclaimed and influential work on the theory and practice of presidential leadership, Richard Neustadt has produced a new edition that re-examines and elaborates on his earlier concepts in the light of the subsequent experience of Presidents John F. Kennedy through Ronald Reagan....