Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

I'll keep this short... for those of you that remember the Pentagon Papers this is the current day equivalent. Savage not only writes of the excessess of usurpation of constitutional power by the Cheney-Bush administration, but of past methods used by executive branches of both parties to the detriment of what I previously (and perhaps naively) believed was our representative form of gov't. After reading this I think you will recognize that it's not so much the executive branch's methods of usurping power not provided to it by our Constitution, or by taking power specifically given to Congress by the constitution, but the congress's inaction over several generations of presidents to insure it maintains it's constitutionally mandated responsibilities.

I'm in shock as to how far this has gone after reading Takeover... the subtitle, "... Subversion of American Democracy" is a gross understatement. I think any patriot who believes in our constitution and separation of power with it's founders well considered checks and balances as the means of avoiding power concentrated in any one branch of Gov't will find Savage's account of how the executive branch has taken full & virtually exclusive control, it's methods, & historical precedence extremely enlightening.

Dick Cheney is an amazing person. I'm sure that isn't what you were expecting to read. To clarify, I don't agree with his take on presidential power. I'm just impressed by VP Cheney's ability to bully his way through life so successfully. Scary.

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy is an expanded version of the series of articles that won Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage a Pulitzer Prize. Along with Unchecked and Unbalanced by Aziz Huq and Frederick A. O. Schwarz, it's essential reading to understand how the Bush administration has undermined our democracy and used 9/11 and the so-called war on terror to grab unchecked power for themselves. We get an early glimpse of Samuel A. Alito, Jr., as a member of Reagan's Justice Department pushing for greater executive power, and Savage also documents the role of the Federalist Society in pushing its radical and inane unitary executive theory. These are scary people. Could it be that in the age of global capitalism, democracy has become an encumbrance to the corporate agenda? Savage doesn't really address the reasons for the Bush administration's grab for power and its efforts to end our system of checks and balances and separation of powers. But there's plenty of evidence in the examples cited that at least one of the reasons is to gut federal regulation of their corporate cronies.

Takeover is one of the best books on the Bush administration if not the best one out right now. Savage has compiled all of the misdeeds by the Bush/Cheney administration into one book. I felt this book was well written and excellently researched. It did not have a liberal bent and seemed for the most part partisan. Savage never said this is how I feel or this is my opinion.

This book is filled with so much that it is hard to break it down for a simple review on Borders.com. One way to sum it up is that Bush/Cheney has basically turned the title "Commander In Chief" into the noun dictator or tyrant maybe. Further, this book shows that it is not necessarily Bush but rather Cheney who has become the sole source of authority in this country in relation to the presidency. Congress is meaningless to Cheney and his cohorts and the judiciary is just a tool to make legal what they knew was illegal. Further, even if a court were to rule against Cheney, the neocons were going to do whatever they wanted under the rubric of the unitary president a.k.a. "Commander In Chief." Most of the conservative judges (picked by conservative presidents) just rubber stamped whatever Cheney wanted.

One good quote is when Savage wrote that "Officials viewed the law not as setting boundaries for their actions, but raising impediments to their goals. When the goals and the law collided, the law gave way."

Also, Savage show how little courage the MSM has when reporting on this administration. Much of what he writes about was either not reported or glossed over by the MSM.

Another key point is that we see the duplicity of politicians in charge on the federal level. The republicans under a republican President asserted all types of executive powers while de-asserting Congressional power. Then when Carter and especially Clinton were in power they whined and cried that the liberal presidents were usurping executive powers. Then as we see when Bush II came into power there was an all out assault on getting executive powers. What's interesting also, is that when some conservatives started to doubt the programs and assertions of the Bush administration they did so only by asking themselves how would a democrat use those powers instead of merely looking to see if the programs were wrong or illegal.

This presidency is all about power.

In conclusion this book brings to the fore front the veracity of anything anyone in the Bush administration says. I do not understand how none of these people ended up in prison, especially John Yoo. We should be scared about what is going to happen in the future especially if another neocon gets into the presidency. How will they improve on all the inroads that Cheney has made. Savage notes that people cried foul at many of the things Cheney and his staff and cohorts did but it wasn't a voice that was all in unison at one time because many of the things came out at different times and different people cried foul.

One of the more telling revelations was when Savage, quoting Mann, wrote of how "the Reagan administration would fly Cheney to a secret bunker to practice rebuilding the government if the Soviets destroyed Washington." And that "the Reagan plan ignored the Presidential Succession Act..." by allowing Cheney to run the government instead of Congress (because under the Reagan plan Congress would not be reconstituted) if the government were attacked.

Another revelation that I do not recall ever hearing is that Justice Roberts met with Gonzales, Cheney, Bush, et al, while a case was before him. Similar to how Scalia met with Cheney while he was hearing a case.

I think this explosive book is going to change MANY things and WAKE people up about the real deal going on in the so called Bush Admistration. All I can say, it's better to be informed on the TRUTH, than be lied to by our own government. For shame. GREAT BOOK! If you dislike The Bush Admistration as much as I heartily do, you will be : frightened, amazed, angry, etc. Cheney is pure 100% EVIL. Bush is just the puppet show.