Opednews.com

In a superb new book, entitled The
Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power,
Gene Healy documents the multiple ways our political system has been corrupted
by an out-of-control, unchecked Executive that could not be any more
antithetical to the "presidency of limited powers and modest goals the
Framers gave us in 1787." As Healy demonstrates, allowing the President to
transmute into some central, omnipotent figure of authority -- as Bush/Cheney
have done and as McCain seems to embrace -- "is the source of much of our
political woe and some of the gravest threats to our liberties," and --
more significantly still -- this model (as the Founders recognized) virtually
guarantees a state of ever-expanding militarism and endless war:

Throughout American history, virtually every major advance
in executive power has come during a war or a warlike crisis. Convince the
public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to action fall,
as power flows to the commander in chief.
Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the
modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms
. . . . Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents
push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism or
natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually
count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.

As the amazing commenter Pow Wow repeatedly documents here
(see here for one typically excellent example), Congress has "increasingly deferred,
dangerously and slavishly, to the presidency, which today very much resembles a
monarchy," a state of affairs which -- for the reasons Healy describes --
makes endless war and imperial behavior almost inevitable. As Pow Wow puts it:
"The choice for Americans today . . . is between Empire and Republic. We
cannot have both."
The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few
relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically
embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters. His ludicrous
speech yesterday -- actually complaining that it is the judiciary that wields
too much power and is excessively limiting presidential powers -- simply leaves
no doubt about that.

-- Glenn Greenwald