Of Laws and Men, and Would Be Monarchs

By Christy Hardin Smith @ 11:26 am

Dan Froomkin has been asking all the right questions the last couple of days, including a fantastic column today on NeimanWatchdog on the issue of Presidential Signing Statements:

There are crucial questions for the White House, for Congress, for Congress to ask the White House, and for reporters to ask every Congressional candidate before the November election.
"I think one of the important things here is for reporters to apply their journalistic instincts to this story," says Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University public administration professor. Cooper’s seminal scholarly article on signing statements appeared in the academic journal, Presidential Studies Quarterly, last fall.

Cooper wrote that the Bush White House "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress."

In fact, many of the objections the White House has raised in signing statements seem to be less about the specific legislation at issue and more about consistently resisting any limitations on executive power. For instance, any bill that requires a report to Congress sets off a signing-statement tripwire.

This is exactly right, and these questions desperately need asking by each and every reporter on the beat — and by everyday Americans who ought to require answers from their elected representatives and from their President. Froomkin documents the paltry coverage given this issue by other news organizations, beyond the substantial digging that Charlie Savage has been doing for the Boston Globe. (For which he deserves Pulitzer consideration for keeping this issue alive in the face of so much malaise from the rest of the blinders-on media crowd.)

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