Exactly.
And just as Bill Gates answers to his board of directors, the president answers to us. And we should be able to oversee his execution of his job – at whatever level of detail we wish – and decide whether we like it.
The president does important stuff and stuff I couldn’t do myself, but so do my plumber and electrician. They all work for me and have no business claiming any privilege against my asking what exactly they’ve been up to.
Not so long as the discussions concern legitimate administrative procedure, that sort of thing. If the discussions concern how best to manipulate and influence governmental power to ensure political power, that is wholly illegitimate and no privilege, executive or otherwise, will make it legitimate, and protected.
The President and his advisors, or the advisors w/o the President, cannot legitimately discuss how best to assassinate Dennis Kucinich (D, The Shire). Hence, no such discussion may be protected.
And we, the people, are the President’s boss.
The thing that bothers me about this is that your argument here is predicated on the unspoken and undebated assumption that the general public is too stupid to sensibly parse a political debate, to distinguish legitimate criticism from political hand-waving, and therefore the President should be shielded from the distractions that would result from sharing the details of policymaking with the public. You said something earlier to the effect that if this were a criminal matter, there would be a jury for whose benefit disclosure could be compelled, but absent criminal considerations, there is no jury.
I assert, vehemently, that you are wrong: that in political matters, it is the responsibility and obligation of the public to act as a metaphorical jury in exactly these sorts of matters. We are tasked with choosing our leaders, evaluating their performance, and deciding whether to retain them or terminate their service in favor of another candidate. In order to know this, we have to know what the hell they’re doing. If Bush & Co are steering their limited enforcement resources toward the shibboleth of voter fraud, we need to know about it; if those resources resist because they disagree with the priority, we need to know about it; and if Bush & Co are replacing the uncooperative resources with more pliable staff, we absolutely need to know about it. The mere fact of the decision is sufficient to warrant disclosure about its rationale, because we the public cannot accurately fulfill our responsibility of choosing our public servants in an informational vacuum.
But when you seem to say that the public will be jerked around by political operators who spin stories out of thin air, and that the public’s reactions to these manufactured concerns will tie the hands of even a well-meaning administration, well, it makes me think that you don’t have much faith in either the American people or our system of governance.
My view, and it’s irrespective of partisanship, applying to all elements of government and all points on the political spectrum, is this: Bring it out. All of it. Let the sun shine in. Let us see what’s going on. Unless it’s a legitimate matter of critical national security, unless serious national secrets are at stake, it’s public. Period.
So there’s a risk of somebody getting pilloried for saying the President risks losing the Jewish vote? Too bad. They can either explain why they think the Jewish vote represents a legitimate demographic bloc to be pursued, or they can stop talking about the Jews. There’s political hay to be made when a senior official sits down at a table with the heads of Exxon and Shell, or, alternatively, the heads of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club? Too bad. Either explain to the public why it was necessary, or don’t do it.
To be fair, I myself am more than a little cynical about the perceptiveness, intelligence, and resistance to malleability of the average human being, but coddling them and shielding them from a scary and complicated reality is just going to allow the problem to persist and get worse.
The problem with that model is that in a political realm, others will constantly seek to paint the President – indeed, any politician – negatively. And in a world of sound bites, things that are of value to the country can be twisted and shown is a very negative light.
If you impose that requirement of utter transparency, you limit the kinds of things that people will be willing to say and do in support of the President, and that loss is to the detriment of our society.
Totally off topic, why is Kucinich being relocated to The Shire?
But not in the same way. In a representative democracy, we select a leader, but we don’t have the collective power to subject each of our leaders’ decisions to a vote. It’s true in a general sense that we, the people, are the ultimate bosses, but not in the meaning suggested by that phrase. We the people don’t approve the President’s every decision. We select a President every four years and give him the reins.
Witness protection. Blend in with the natives.
But through our other representatives, we also have the power to question and even remove him. And he has the duty to answer those questions. And that goes double for his minions.
Yes, but we’re sitting in the wagon; we’re not strapping ourselves into the harness.
Yup, they sure will. In fact, they’re doing it as we speak. And the world is not grinding to a halt.
And I have absolutely no fear at all that this will result in the president being left unaware of any realistic, important, or legitimate options regarding how to carry out policy. After reaching that level of public responsibility, no way will I let them get away with playing dumb like that.
I’m guessing it’s because he’s short and funny looking.
US vs Nixon says executive privilege is not absolute. However Rove is not in the country right now. We can not question him so he can prove how bad his memory is.
Man, that is cheesy. And smart.
So far as I’m concerned, the only difference is the method for removing an elected office holder. We can’t just dismiss him on the spot or call in the H.R. department. We have to wait until the next election or persuade the legislature to impeach him.
But until then we must have full knowledge of what the hell he’s doing so that we have some reasonable basis for making that hiring/firing decision at the next election cycle or at the legislative level. The president is already protected by the fact that he can’t be sacked like any other employee. He doesn’t deserve the additional protection of getting to hide the way he does his job so that he can deceive us when it’s time for us to decide whether to keep him.
And I absolutely do not recognize any elected official or government employee as my leader. They’re my servants. In some cases they are granted a tremedous degree of authority; thus, they must be watched more closely than other servants.
For the record, fired US Attorney David Iglesias’ comments re this matter in Slate , excerpts of which follow (with emphasis added):
(In US vs Nixon) special prosecutor Leon Jaworski had sought audio recordings that the president had covertly taped of conversations between Nixon and his advisers. These tapes would presumably prove an alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States and to obstruct justice. Nixon asserted executive privilege in an effort to quash that subpoena. The district court held that the judiciary, and not the president, was the final arbiter of any claim of executive privilege and determined that the privilege was overcome in this case by the special prosecutor’s need to examine the evidence. On that issue, and in a unanimous opinion filed by then-Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Supreme Court agreed. While the Supreme Court recognized the existence of executive privilege, it concluded that it was not an absolute right.** The court noted that “military or diplomatic secrets” of an administration would be given “utmost deference.” But the court was simply unwilling to go further to extend this high degree of deference merely to protect “a President’s generalized interest in confidentiality.”**
This brings us to the George W. Bush administration, which, like the Nixon administration of my barely recalled childhood dreams, reflexively claims privilege, even when it doesn’t apply. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, has noted in another case that "[e]xecutive privilege is an extraordinary assertion of power ‘not to be lightly invoked.’ " Kennedy has further stated that “once executive privilege is asserted, coequal branches of the Government are set on a collision course.” The current administration seems to have an abundant supply of crash-test dummies that must exist merely for the joy of smashing into things. The assertion of executive privilege looks to be no more and no less than a collision staged to illustrate the infinite reach of this administration’s claims to secrecy. ***
On June 28, 2007, President Bush asserted executive privilege when Congress sought the production of documents from Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor in connection to the U.S. attorney scandal. In shielding those documents, the administration gravely intoned that the president needed to “… receive candid and unfettered advice.” That much I agree with, of course. The problem is that President Bush had already stated publicly that he personally had nothing to do with the firing of my former U.S. attorney colleagues and me. The Nixon decision rightly found that Congress shouldn’t be able to force presidential aides to report on the advice they gave to the president, especially about diplomatic or military secrets. The Bush administration stretched that privilege like cheap spandex in an attempt to have it cover “free and open discussions and deliberations [that] occur among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch.”
Wait a minute. So now, the qualified privilege carved out in the Nixon decision is supposed to cover discussions among advisers that never even speak to the president, and then beyond that to cover even “others … outside the Executive Branch”? If the president calls his old college buddy at ExxonMobil for a little advice on gasoline prices, the advice he receives is privileged? And if his secretary’s secretary calls the same guy, that advice is privileged as well? In fact, the number of conversations both inside and outside the White House that are not covered by such a privilege starts looking awfully close to zero.
Since when did executive privilege cover nondiplomatic and nonmilitary secrets involving advice given by nongovernmental advisers? I’d call this executive privilege on steroids, or maybe even executive carte blanche. *** "
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I am a mature adult in a democratic society. I’m not a child. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a member of an athletic team. When it comes to my function as a citizen, rather than as, say, an employee, or a member of some other hierarchical organization, I don’t need no stinkin’ leader.
If he wasn’t telling the truth about having nothing to do with it, then he’s protected, because those discussions he didn’t have are protected. You cannot interfere with the President’s Constitutional privilege to lie his ass off.
That’s why Og made knotholes! 
Dudes- just because you have not seen Congress do anything on this does not mean they aren’t doing anything. As Bricker has pointed out, this is a tricky legal issue. I have no doubt that some of the best legal minds in Congress are consulting, and even consulting outside- and figuring out how best to handle this, and the discussion is not held in open session, either.
Things like this are not done by the Speaker yelling “off with his head!” (worse the luck 
, but think of what could the GOP have done with that power a few years ago!). Pre-emptive acts like that on issues like this just makes things worse.
I also suspect Rove’s Lawyer is bargaining furiously behind the scenes as to what his client will testify about.
Yeah, but the man left the country. He’s wealthy and has wealthy friends. He has only to stay outside the country for the rest of the month and then he can come until after Labor Day. Etc. Unless we want to involve Interpol on this (admittedly a lovely thought, but rather unlikely) he really could evade this for the rest of his life, and still work his Rovian machinations via the magic of technology and the fact that Congress takes fairly lengthy breaks on a very predictable schedule. And frankly, I don’t have faith in the American voters to still be interested in this twenty years from now. Hell, I don’t have much faith in them to still be interested in this twenty months from now. Probably most of them aren’t interested in it right now. I wonder how what percentage of people in the street have any idea who Rove is or that he’s wanted to testify before Congress or why.
At any rate, Rove is scheduled to be back in the county by September 26, to debate John Edwards at the University of New York at Buffalo.
I was surprised by that news. Rove in a public debate? I know he was on the debating team in high school, but for most of his career he’s been a behind-the-scenese kinda guy.