The Case That the President’s Reach Exceeds His Grasp

Back in the 1970s and ’80s, in the wake of post-Watergate reforms, which put a brake on the executive power amassed by Richard M. Nixon, a small group of Republicans — including, most notably, Dick Cheney, who was then President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff and later President George H. W. Bush’s secretary of defense — abandoned traditional conservatives’ suspicion of concentrated government power and began looking for ways to expand presidential prerogatives. As Charlie Savage, a reporter for The Boston Globe, observes in his astute and harrowing new book, "Takeover,” those efforts made some progress during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, and came to startling fruition under the current administration of George W. Bush and Mr. Cheney, now the vice president.

Indeed, Mr. Savage suggests that after Sept. 11 a “perfect storm of political pressures,” including a compliant, Republican-controlled Congress and a public fearful of further terrorist attacks, enabled an aggressive White House to expand vastly the powers of the executive branch and dangerously tip the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Details here from the New York Times.