I’m not really sure why people like Clinton’s former chief of staff (1998-2001) John Podesta think it is worth their time to give the Bush administration advice. They won’t take it. I know that I am guilty of doing the same thing from time to time, but it’s a bad habit I’ve tried to kick. It’s one thing to kind of fantasize about what a sensible course would look like on foreign or domestic policy. But it’s embarrassing to ‘get caught trying’ to influence the current occupants of the White House.
Podesta had a champion race horse for a president. Sure, he got caught with his zipper down and severely weakened his negotiating power. But it isn’t very surprising that Clinton was able to pass all kinds of laudable legislation in his last 18 months in office. Josh Bolten has George W. Bush. What the hell is he going to accomplish? Podesta plaintively appeals for Bush to stop abusing his executive power.
The Bush team has already signaled that the president intends to exercise executive authority to accomplish his agenda. Given George W. Bush’s track record on surveillance, military tribunals and torture, one can only hope his future uses of executive power will be carried out with more wisdom.
Yet, elsewhere in today’s WaPo they report that we’re headed for a police state.
The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers…
…But civil liberties groups quickly condemned the move, which Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a nonprofit activist group, likened to “Big Brother in the sky.” “They want to turn these enormous spy capabilities, built to be used against overseas enemies, onto Americans,” Martin said. “They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police state.”
If good intentions were ponies, John Podesta could open a petting zoo. But they’re aren’t and he can’t.
The only reasonable advice I can give to the Bush administration at this point is that they resign en masse and plead for clemency.