Don’t Believe the Hype: Why You Should Not Support Fred Thompson’s Candidacy for President

Fred Thompson announced his candidacy for president today. He does not deserve your support.

 

 

First, Thompson downplays the role of people in causing climate change. This might play well among oil company executives, but Americans recognize the seriousness of climate change, support some sort of governmental response to global warming, and realize that it is caused by human activity.

 

 

Although claiming, predictably, to be a different kind of candidate “running a different kind of campaign,” Thompson repeats the same old Republican line about gay marriage: “Marriage is between a man and a woman, and I don’t believe judges ought to come along and change that.” Thompson is wrong: judges who rule that state constitutions cannot bar marriage between gay couples are merely upholding the law. His opinion strongly resembles that expressed in the 2004 Republican Party Platform: “We further believe that legal recognition and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for that unique and special union of one man and one woman which has historically been called marriage.” 

 

 

The candidate gives greater weight to gun owners’ Second Amendment rights than to the safety of the public. This trend is popular with the Republican base, but is wrongheaded. Republicans of this ilk should balance the right to own a Glock against the right of children to walk to school in safety.

 

 

He accuses Giuliani of leaning too far to the left. This should speak for itself.

 

 

Thompson, lockstep with the loud, alarmist wing of the conservative movement, focuses on securing the borders rather than providing a workable solution to our country’s immigration problems.

 

 

His warnings about Iraq resemble the Domino Theory espoused by supporters of the Vietnam War. He is just as alarmist in his rhetoric as the president.

 

 

Most worryingly, however, are his bizarre and atavistic views on what used to be called state’s rights. “Strong states and limited federal government” receives his strenuous support. Few would argue against a limited federal government, but what Thompson has in mind smacks of the arguments advanced by segregationists. It is a common, knee-jerk reaction of those opposed to progressive social change. The fact that Thompson’s Principles page of his website is devoted to his conception of federalism shows that he sees everything through the lens of this sine qua non.

 

 

Even so Thompson has gotten a few things right, a very few things, and other candidates should take note. He supports free trade. This is sensible. He opposes abortion. This is humane. But these two bright spots are not enough.

 

 

To support Thompson is to support the failed policies of the Bush administration and the Republican party. A Thompson presidency would lead to insecurity, disunity, and torpor, the precise opposite of what candidate Thompson promises.

 

An Amusing Day for the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal, despite Rupert Murdoch’s recent shenanigans, remains one of the nation’s best newspapers. Today, the day on which it reported the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, it was a particularly good read. And to look at. Just check out the cover.

 

 

 

The right two-thirds of the paper above the fold, you will notice, contains nothing but bad news for our esteemed president. There is a jolly old photo of Gonzales, looking rather fat despite having been canned, but near the fold in the lower right, the eye is drawn there in its descent, is our unsmiling Dear Leader, the real topic of the day.

 

 

The headlines told the tale: “Case Closed” said the puckish slug just above the largest headline, “Gonzales Resignation Ends an Era: Broader Bush Effort on Executive Power Is Dealt a Major Blow.” We are beginning to sense that the practice, if not the theory, of the unitary executive is in its final days in this country. And good riddance.

 

 

 

 

And then there is this charming article, helpfully post on the WSJ website: “Lame-Duck President Has Fewer Tools to Advance His Shrinking Agenda.” And how exactly, Mr. President, does one swagger when one’s agenda is so wretchedly flaccid?

 

 

Take that, Mr. Murdoch.

 

Unsurprisingly, one of the president’s aims, says the Journal, will be “advancing a Republican agenda as best he can through regulatory moves and executive actions that skirt congressional input.” Funny, that sounds familiar.

 

It is indeed a shame that Bush could not get his immigration bill, as insufficient as it was, through a xenophobic Congress. But the president’s lame-duck status can only be good for the nation. Throughout his presidency, Bush has displayed remarkable arrogance coupled with unflinchingly bad policymaking. His wrongs range from starting a war for no good reason, his worst fault, to comparatively minor offenses, such as hobbling the agency might have inspected the now infamous lead-riddled foreign toys.

 

Arrogance? Witness spokeman Tony Fratto’s schoolyard disparagement: “the term ‘lame duck’ is for dime-store political scientists,” he said. Sticks and stones, Tony.

 

Deconstructing Alberto’s resignation

When President Bush announced today that Alberto Gonzales had resigned, I did a little dance. So did thousands of other relieved Americans, if only symbolically. It is interesting to deconstruct for a moment one small portion of the president’s speech announcing the long-awaited event.

 

The president calls Gonzales a man of “integrity, decency and principle.”

 

Let’s deal with this issue of principle. A person with principles, one might venture, especially an attorney general, would uphold the basic principles of our Constitution. Especially the right against unreasonable search and seizure and the right to privacy, two pillars of not only American law, but of the laws of most nations claimed to be ruled by them.

 

And yet Gonzales has done his level best, at the president’s prodding, to claim that unreasonable search and seizure and privacy protections apply to only some Americans some of the time. They certainly don’t apply, he claims, to some Americans in extraordinary times such as these, times of war. Gonzales and those who support his views seem to believe that the threat of terrorism exempts his officials from their obligation under the Constitution to obtain permission to wiretap Americans. The establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1978 made obtaining wiretaps in cases of suspected terrorism even easier for law enforcement personnel. In fact, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant could even be obtained after the fact.

 

But the Gonzales and the Bush administration would have none of this. Gonzales asserted that the president had the authority, under Article II of the Constitution, to monitor communications between Americans and people outside the United States without a warrant. He justified this with references to Washington’s, Wilson’s, and Roosevelt’s similar actions during wartime. He further stated that Congress had authorized the president to conduct warrantless surveillance under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Public Law 107-40, of September 18, 2001.

 

However, the law stated that the president may use “all necessary and appropriate force” against the sordid gang that committed the September 11 atrocities and those that helped them to do so. The president and the attorney general have a lot of leeway to interpret the necessary portion of this statement; the appropriate portion, much less so as it is confined by the law.

 

Is it reasonable for the administration to have argued that it was “appropriate” for the president to have ignored the Fourth Amendment? I think not. No president may do this. Although nearly all Americans, I presume, support reasonable efforts to prevent terrorist attacks, few of us would support giving up our civil liberties in order to gain such illusory safety. Even if this were not true, these liberties are protected unequivocally by our Constitution. The majority, if such a majority exists, may not take these protections away.

 

Isn’t freedom what we’re told we’re fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan? If we must protect freedom abroad, surely we must protect it at home. Now that Gonzales is gone, I feel a little more free. I’ll feel even better on January 20, 2009.

 

Is Gonzales a man of principle? Maybe, but certainly a man of the wrong principles. The nation is better for his resignation. It is too bad that Gonzales was brought down not by this erroneous application of what he thought was the law, but by the administration’s petty political vendettas against judges it thought were not performing up to par. In any case, Gonzales will soon be gone, but the feculent ideas he embodied still remain. We may not be able to breathe easier until 2009, but at least the air is getting a little less cloudy.