Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > September > 16 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USJohn Dean, reckless Republicanism, and veto overrides in Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The historical image of John Dean is that of the bespectacled attorney, hunched over a microphone, who coolly brings the scandal of Watergate home to millions of living rooms in a dull, droning monotone.
Thirty-five years later, the former White House counsel is still a whistleblower.
At 7 p.m. Monday, he’ll be at the Carter Center, autograph pen in hand, flogging his latest book: “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches.”
There’s nothing subtle about the title. It’s one of a number of recent tomes about the excesses of the Bush administration, written by current or former Republicans.
Dean — who, by the way, is now a licensed independent in California — has ditched the lawyer’s monotone for the writer’s polemic. Passion is probably the word he’d prefer.
“But when I see what’s going on — I can’t believe these people,” he said in a telephone interview.
Among his points: A prediction that Republicans are on the verge of turning the word “conservative” into a pejorative — much as they rendered “liberal” into an unspeakable slur in today’s political rhetoric.
Except “conservative” is rapidly becoming a synonym for incompetence, Dean says. From Iraq to Katrina, he said, Republicans have lost their sense of practicality.
And for that, he said, partial blame must be laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan, who famously declared that government is the problem, not the solution.
“Why in the hell are you trying to run the government if you don’t believe in government?” Dean asked. “It’s the wrong attitude to bring to the process — and that is, how to destroy it rather than how to make it work.”
“Broken Government” also touches on Dean’s alarm at his former party’s eagerness to expand the power of the presidency, exemplified by Vice President Dick Cheney.
“Republicans and conservatives once were deeply opposed to an overly powerful executive branch — certainly after [Franklin] Roosevelt,” Dean said.
Now they’ve embraced “authoritarian conservatism,” he said. Of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, Dean ranks Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich as “high authoritarians.” Fred Thompson, a U.S. Senate staff attorney Dean faced during his Watergate testimony, is ranked as a “low authoritarian.”
It would be tempting to brush Dean off as an out-of-touch political relic with little relevance to Republican rule in Georgia, which even now is only five years old. But Dean is very much clued into the behind-the-scenes debate that’s roiling the GOP at both the national and state level.
In Washington and Georgia, Republicans are trying to puzzle out what it means to be a conservative.
Case in point: This year’s session of the Legislature came to an embarrassingly messy end because of growing unrest in the Legislature — particularly the House — over the reach of executive power in the state Capitol.
Gov. Sonny Perdue ended up vetoing 41 bills, most of them sponsored by Republicans. He drew his pen through $130 million in proposed spending, and a $142 million property tax rebate.
Unlike in other states, veto overrides have never been common in Georgia. But that may be about to change. Republican legislators have spent much of the summer discussing how best to assert themselves.
The current plan, gaining favor in both the House and Senate, is for legislators to override one or two of Perdue’s vetoes when the General Assembly reconvenes in January. Just to show they can.
One of the vetoed bills may be H.B. 91, a measure to require that state agencies, controlled by the governor, give more detailed information on spending to the Legislature.
“It’s something under discussion,” said state Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), the bill’s sponsor.
She cut loose with this: “The contest of the ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.”
Chamber wasn’t channeling John Dean. That’s Daniel Webster.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Jane Grey
September 17, 2007 1:21 AM | Link to this
You go girl.
By GB
September 17, 2007 6:36 AM | Link to this
“Why in the hell are you trying to run the government if you don’t believe in government?” Dean asked. “It’s the wrong attitude to bring to the process — and that is, how to destroy it rather than how to make it work.”
This statement by Dean is silly. No one does not “believe in” government. Conservatives want to limit government’s scope. The only way to accomplish this goal - other than revolution - is through political and governmental action. There is nothing inconsistent about wanting both to (1) run the government and (2) aspiring to lessen government’s power.
By Eric
September 17, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this
GB @ 6:36:
A well-conceived and thoughtfully expressed comment about the proper role and scope of government.
In his autobiography “An American Life”, Ronald Regan spoke of reducing the scope of government by taking away its food supply—tax dollars. He also admitted that the growth of federal spending in his two terms was something he much regretted.
An unrestrained government is not a friend to anyone who cherishes freedom.
By Matt Jennings
September 17, 2007 10:52 AM | Link to this
I agree that “unrestrained government is not a friend to anyone who cherishes freedom.” However, an unrestrained corporate sector is just as bad.
By Will Jones
September 17, 2007 11:09 AM | Link to this
Ronald Reagan’s line is cut-off. Wonder why? The same reason nobody with any American Sense bothers referring to the airport on the Potomac as anything but “National.” Printing unconstitutional new money to create or enhance nouveau-riche whitetrash fascists enslaving the American People to the Federal Reserve Bank JFK’s Executive Order 11,110 terminated was not intelligent, wise or patriotic. The first task any POTUS should accomplish is to bring to justice the Fifth Column faction (Rockefeller, Bush, Nixon, DuPont, et al) that funded Hitler on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church; killed John Kennedy and Dr. King to keep us in Rome’s fiefdom of Vietnam, and reinstate the unconstitutional Fed; and committed 9-11 to take our sons and daughters to false war for heroin through Dubai and oil.
Whether Carter, Reagan, or Clinton(whose nose is oddly shaped like Winthrop Rockefeller’s), any POTUS failing in the removal of that known “Anti-Christ” from our shores is obviously employed by it.
By jillchambers
September 17, 2007 11:37 AM | Link to this
here is another of my favorite quotes, this one from Patrick Henry:
“The liberties of the people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
thanks, Jill
By D
September 17, 2007 12:29 PM | Link to this
best quote: “Republicans live by the theory that government is ineffective, that way, when they screw things up, they can say: ‘see, I told you so…’.”
By Adam
September 17, 2007 12:33 PM | Link to this
the Republicans are for smaller government. that didn’t work out too good. they are also against entitlement programs. what entitlement programs have they eliminated? none. but they have created the two biggest entitlement programs we have ever known, Iraq and Illegal Immigration, which by the way have helped to increase the size of our government.