Bush and the "cult of the all powerful presidency". You might want to read this one in bed with the sheets tucked up to your chin.

For these cultists of an all-powerful presidency, the holy war, the "crusade" to be embarked upon was, above all, aimed at creating a President accountable to no one, overseen by no one, and restricted by no other force or power in his will to act as he saw fit. And so, in this White House, all roads have led back to one issue: How to press ever harder at the weakening boundaries of presidential power. This is why, when critics concentrate on any specific issue or set of administration acts, no matter how egregious or significant, they invariably miss the point. The issue, it turns out, is never primarily -- to take just two areas of potentially illegal administration activity -- torture or warrantless surveillance. Though each of them had value and importance to top administration officials, they were nonetheless primarily the means to an end.

This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the "global war on terror" almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks was so important. It was to be a "war" without end. No one ever attempted to define what "victory" might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations. Even the recent sudden presidential announcement that we will now settle only for "complete victory" in Iraq is, in this context, a distinctly limited goal because Iraq has already been defined as but a single "theater" (though a "central" one) in a larger war on terror. A war without end, of course, left the President as a commander-in-chief-without-end and it was in such a guise that the acolytes of that "obscure philosophy" of total presidential power planned to claim their "inherent" constitutional right to do essentially anything. (Imagine what might have happened if their invasion of Iraq had been a success!)

It is this phrase, "A war without end, of course, left the President as a commander-in-chief-without-end", that really makes my blood run cold. It is becoming more clear every day that Bush's megalomaniacal approach to running this country is extremely dangerous, and not just today but for decades to come.

Without a Congress to dam up his rampant power grabs, Bush could single handedly destroy the office that he never really deserved in the first place. Can we imagine what will happen when the dust settles and Congress gets a chance to look back on this debacle with a clearer perspective? The presidential powers could end up being much more limited in the future. The country is going to want to make sure that this kind of abuse of power never occurs in the future.

And even if you are a Bush supporter, just imagine how you would feel if this was happening under a Democratic president. Or how you will feel if these powers remain for the next elected Commander in Chief? Now do you feel my chill?