Even when heads of state or government last through multiple terms, it's not uncommon for the rest of their government - the legislature, the executive and the cabinet, and so on - to get shuffled around every few years. This is pretty much normal, of course, and few people bother to bat eyes at it. The American case this time around is no exception for this, of course; the US shuffles its internal affairs far more regularly than every four years.
You all have no doubt heard of the changes coming out of the cabinet, such as the nomination of Mr. Gonzales to replace Ashcroft as Attorney-General - Warrior Tang has discussed this a couple of times. Having so discourteously left me with little to say on that particular shuffle, he got me wondering about some of the other shifts going on in this administration. Today I'm going to be talking a little bit about the events in the CIA, and the patterns into which those events fit.
The outcome of the election, such as it was, will have a significant impact on internal government policies for Bush's second administration. Compared to his first term, he is in a far stronger position. Rather than coming into office under questionable circumstances with a small majority in Congress a fervent if uncertain base of popular support, in the 2004 election President Bush was returned to office under questionable circumstances with an enlarged majority on Congress and a fervent, majority base of popular support. While the political system is more polarized than it has been at basically any time short of the late 1850s - I leave considering the implications of that to the reader - Bush can make an attempt at laying claim to his "mandate." To put it into Canadian parlance, he feels free to govern as though he had a majority - and that's precisely what he is doing.
Now, the latter part of the president's previous term in office featured a, shall we say, slight conflict with the CIA over just about everything pertaining to the current war on Iraq. On just about every major issue - its plans for the region, its relationship with terrorist organizations, its possessions of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons - the US intelligence community was almost totally at odds with the public exclamations of the US government. Now, the CIA's take was dead on - Iraq wasn't gearing up for aggressive war, its connections with al-Qaeda were minimal to nonexistent (that Iraq supported Palestinian suicide bombers cannot be denied; this, however, is a far reach from claiming Iraq was the operations centre for the Islamist movement), and the WMD "stockpiles" discovered in country might have been sufficient to seriously harm a double handful of elderly asthmatics.
To announce or leak these facts during and after the war was politically embarassing, to say the least, though. Some of the initial plans to get back at the Agency over this were heavy-handed, to say the least, but these failed and were quickly withdrawn. It was, after all, election season; Bush couldn't afford to be too blunt. The election's past though - and, even better, the president no longer has to worry about whether he can get re-elected or not.
So now, it's payback time for the Bush Administration.
In the past day or so, some news sources have reported a lot of infighting, resignations, and general furballery in the CIA, hinting at a significant internal conflict since the appointment of Peter Goss a couple of months ago. On the heels of those reports comes the allegation that the White House is in fact preparing a purge of the CIA:
The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.
"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."
If this is true, it is not the beginning of a trend, but merely the latest shot fired in it. Combined with the president's other cabinet nominees (most notably Gonzales) and even comments from outgoing figures, such as John Ashcroft's condemnation of judges who "second-guess presidential determinations" when they happen to be questionable or illegal, we're already beginning to see the pattern for the new administration.
As I said above, Bush intends to govern as though he had a proverbial majority. Just what does this mean, for those readers who don't live in parliamentary systems? Essentially, in a system like the Canadian or British government, when the government's party has a majority of the legislature, they almost have carte blanche to behave as they will. Short of pushing things too far and provoking a revolt within the governing party itself, the wishes and expectations of everybody else become totally optional.
This is the attitude the current administration is going to take: one in which loyalty to the man is more important than the integrity of the government's institutions. The Justice Department is on the verge of becoming the personal property of the President (even moreso than under Ashcroft!), and the administrative havoc in the CIA implies that the intelligence community is bound for the same fate. Congress is Republican - obviously - and with the potential for the Supreme Court getting multiple nominees over the next few years, the bulk of that high court will effectively be so as well.
Now, bodies such as the state legislatures are still going to be fairly independent - they're more introverted, and on that level the Republicans got their ass kicked in the elections - the general population is going to swing wherever they swing regardless, and other factions such as the military still have something of independence despite their generally-Republican leanings. Through all this, however, we've got a problem: a large and growing amount of the institutions in the United States have become, or are about to become, manned by personal loyalty to the President - the current President - and not to their tasks or the larger institutions of the country.
The next four years are not going to see much, if any, bipartisanship to speak of. President Bush has his mandate - or he thinks he does, which is the same thing - and he is going to (ab)use it freely for the next little while. I want you all to think for awhile about what this might mean in the administration of a president who no longer has to fear the electorates' reaction come the next general election.
It's not hopeless, of course, just dangerous. Even a majority government in my own system can be brought down if the leader overextends himself, or the opposition convinces enough of their opponents to turn on the government. This is possible, if difficult, but the United States isn't currently Ukraine, with the rather more active moves by the government to put down any attempts at opposition.
In the meantime, though, Bush thinks he has a majority, and he's going to govern as though he does. You might want to brace yourselves.
Posted by zibblsnrt at November 14, 2004 05:22 PM