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The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush
President George W. Bush has failed in his most important responsibility "to preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution of the United States, according to a new Cato Institute study. The authors of the study, legal scholars Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch, say that the administration's sweeping claims of executive power in the Padilla case would suggest that Mr. Bush believes "the liberty of every American rests on nothing more than the grace of the White House." The study, "Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush," details a pattern with the Bush administration of a "ceaseless push for power, unchecked by either the courts or Congress" on issues ranging from war powers, habeas corpus, and federalism to free speech and unwarranted surveillance.

Financial Times

Bush in ‘ceaseless push for power’
By Caroline Daniel in Washington
Published: May 1 2006

President George W. Bush had shown disdain and indifference for the US constitution by adopting an “astonishingly broad” view of presidential powers, a leading libertarian think-tank said on Monday.

The critique from the Cato Institute reflects growing criticism by conservatives about administration policy in areas such as the “war on terror” and undermining congressional power.

“The pattern that emerges is one of a ceaseless push for power, unchecked by either the courts or Congress, one in short of disdain for constitutional limits,” the report by legal scholars Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch concludes.

That view was echoed last week by former congressman Bob Barr, a Republican, who called on Congress to exercise “leadership by putting the constitution above party politics and insisting on the facts” in the debate over illegal domestic wiretapping of terrorist suspects.

On Thursday Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the judiciary committee, noted: “Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress.”

Mr Healy and Mr Lynch argue that Mr Bush has also failed to protect the right to political free speech by approving a bill that eliminated “soft money” contributions to political parties. He had also cracked down on dissenters, with non-violent protesters being harassed by secret service agents whenever Mr Bush appears in public, it said.

The more serious charges concern Mr Bush’s actions in the “war on terror”. Citing a 1977 interview with President Richard Nixon, who said, “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal”, the report argues that the administration’s public and private arguments for untrammelled executive power “comes perilously close to that view”.

The authors cite spying by the National Security Agency and the “torture memos”, produced by the Department of Justice to defend the authority of the president over interrogation techniques. “The constitution’s text will not support anything like the doctrine of presidential absolutism the administration flirts with in the torture memos.”