Bush Administration Divided on Presidential Authority

Apparently not all in the Bush administration have been enthralled by the vision of unlimited war-time executive authority that Bush has claimed. At least a few insiders not only disagreed with the vision, but actively resisted it's implementation:

[Former Assistant Attorney General] Goldsmith was actually the opposite of what his detractors imagined. For nine months, from October 2003 to June 2004, he had been the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers. Their insurrection, described to NEWSWEEK by current and former administration officials who did not wish to be identified discussing confidential deliberations, is one of the most significant and intriguing untold stories of the war on terror.

These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.

That's just a tantalizing intro; the rest of the article lives up to it, and is worth a read in full. What it shows us is that even among those picked by Bush for their conservativism, smarts and loyalty there were those who were so uncomfortable with Bush's over-reaching that they actively opposed it, and have for the most part been replaced by even more loyal yes-men in the process. The article confirms that as hinted at earlier, even Attorney General John Ashcroft was uncomfortable with what some of the hard-liners were up to and pressed for more oversight of the NSA surveillance program as a result. Of course even his limited opposition is gone now, as he's been replaced by Alberto Gonzalez for whom unthinking and unprincipled loyalty is not an issue.

The hallmark of Bush's presidency has been incompetence, but what abets incompetence more than any other single factor is a leader who surrounds himself nothing but yes-men who agree with whatever he wants and tells him whatever he wants to hear. And Bush's greatest failing as a President has been to think that surrounding yourself with people like that is what it means to be a leader.