by John Nichols

It is always a tad troubling to reflect upon questions of George W. Bush's familiarity with the Constitution and the original intents of its authors.

Unlike Bill Clinton, whose obsession with Thomas Jefferson caused him to assert the precepts of the founders to a greater extent than any president since Franklin Roosevelt, Bush the Junior rarely references Jefferson, James Madison or other members of the revolutionary cabal that got this American experiment started.

There is little evidence to suggest that the current President Bush was ever particularly drawn to American history as a source of inspiration or insight. He tended, as a student, more toward cheerleader duties and fraternity pranks.

If the president is unfamiliar with the founders, however, they were not unfamiliar with him - or, at least, with his ilk.

This week, Bush has put himself in the interesting position of refusing to use the positive news out of Afghanistan to declare a sort of victory in the struggle between the world's greatest superpower and the "army" of former divinity students and freelance holy warriors who make up the Taliban.

Instead of gloating, the president has gone to great lengths to declare that "Afghanistan is still just the beginning" and to suggest that the nation's current military commitments entail a "long, long struggle."

The Bush administration's ever-expanding "war on terrorism" could, the president hinted, soon expand to involve direct conflict with Iraq. And Bush's self-proclaimed "mighty struggle" will not stop there. The extent of the president's designs may seem ill defined - as he has never really explained them to the Congress or the American people. But he seems quite certain of himself.

Asked whether he might be evolving the current engagement's scope a good deal beyond the parameters of the writ Congress gave him to respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush replied, "Have I expanded the definition? I've always had that definition, as far as I'm concerned."

So we find ourselves in a state of sort-of war - by any reasonable reading of the Constitution, this remains an undeclared mission - that we are told will be of a continual nature.

Which brings us back to the founders.

James Madison, who poured more energy than any of the other drafters of the Constitution into consideration of the appropriate extent of presidential powers, had a good deal to say about presidents engaging in "long, long struggles."

Warning that war is "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement," the nation's fourth president argued:

"Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Copyright 2001 The Capital Times

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