A Pox on the Senate

Senatorial Importance, Senatorial Impotence
This week we witnessed the truly sorry spectacle of the U.S. Senate caving in to demands for a dangerous and unparalleled expansion of executive power. Make no mistake, the Senators knew what they were doing was wrong. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) said that the military commissions bill "sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely." He said that it was unconstitutional and would be struck down by the courts.

But with the White House's jackboot on his neck, he voted for it anyway. He was not the only one.

Senator Levin proposed to substitute the bipartisan bill that was reported by the Armed Services Committee. That amendment was rejected. Senators Specter and Leahy offered an amendment to restore the right to judicial review. That amendment was rejected. Senator Rockefeller offered an amendment to improve congressional oversight of CIA programs. That amendment was rejected. Senator Kennedy offered an amendment to clarify that inhumane interrogation tactics prohibited by the Army Field manual could not be used on Americans or on others. That amendment was rejected. Senator Byrd offered an amendment to sunset military commissions so that Congress would simply be required to reconsider this far-reaching authority after five years of experience. That too was rejected.

Senator after senator from both sides of the aisle detailed the hideous implications of this bill. It allows the President to designate anyone, regardless of citizenship, as an enemy combatant from whence there is now no judicial appeal. It abolished the writ of habeas corpus not just for people shooting at us on a battlefield in Iraq - but for any random person we think might know something useful about terrorism. It allows the same administration who said the Geneva Conventions were quaint, outdated, and so vague that the President couldn't understand them, to be the sole interpreter of their meaning for our nation from hereon out.

(And you bet, every tin-pot dictator in the world will now become the sole interpreter for their country too. Just as Colin Powell so emphatically warned, by engaging in all this chicanery about our most basic international commitments to human rights, we have endangered our soldiers and our moral standing in the world. This is going to cost us in American blood. )

Infuriatingly, some of the very same senators, from both parties, who acknowledged these things, went on to vote for this bill anyway. In so doing, they not only violated their oath of office, but showed themselves to be nothing but pawns of an administration that is out of control.

Moral and Strategic Failures on Both Sides of the Aisle
What happened this week - the rushed passage of a sloppy, ill-drafted, disastrous bill which many of the Senators hadn't even read - was both a moral and strategic failure on the part of both parties.

Republicans rammed through immoral legislation because they wanted to make short-term election gains, and get home to campaign. The moral failure of this action is obvious for anyone to see. But this was also a strategic failure for Republicans. They have just passed a bill which, if understood by most Americans, would establish them not as the Party of Family Values, but as the Party of Torture. Americans, as it so happens, hate torture. And they're not real nuanced about it. Torture is not an American value. A majority of Americans say torture is always wrong, even against terrorists who have information we want. This vote is so infamous that any smart Democratic challenger will bludgeon Republicans incumbents with it until they're bloodier than the detainees in secret CIA prisons.

It is usually the Republican Party that is able to boil down every issue to bumper sticker morality, leaving Democrats scrambling to explain the policy subtleties. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Here's a great bumpersticker: Torture is Immoral.

But Democratic senators are not off the hook. They made moral and strategic blunders of their own. First, instead of trusting the American people enough to come forward and explain to them what exactly was so foul about this bill, Democratic senators let Warner, McCain, and Graham take all the heat. These three Republican Senators were pilloried by their own party for daring to say that torture is wrong. Under intense pressure from the right, and silence from the left, these three Senators reached an abominable compromise.

Even then, Democrats sat on their hands and did not make the case. Instead of flooding the talk shows to take a stand, even the most fiery Senators took no position on the bill at all. This, in spite of an increasingly angry Democratic base demanding that they speak out. The Senate Democratic leadership let the newspaper editorials do their talking for them, and once they realized they would not win a filibuster - they made the even more idiotic decision to trust in the passage of the Specter-Leahy Amendment.

Theoretically, the amendment would have restored habeas corpus, but Democrats were completely snookered. One vital moderate Republican Senator didn't show up on the floor to vote at all, and without her, the moderates went all weak-kneed. Not only did the Specter-Leahy Amendment fail, but over the weekend, right-wing lawmakers added new language to the bill that essentially rendered moot even the modest compromises won by Warner, McCain, and Graham.

At this point, Democrats were forced to vote in overwhelming numbers against a bill that they had not taken a position on until that day. Democratic senators made persuasive and historical arguments against this bill, but it was too late. Because of their failure to take a stand before the vote, they gave political cover to their most craven members to break ranks for the short-term gain of the upcoming elections. But that too may prove to be a mistake, because the resulting rage of party activists at this betrayal may so dampen turnout during the mid-term elections that tight races like Bob Menendez may now radically shift. Many Democrats believe that reasonable people can disagree about the Iraq War; they do not believe reasonable people can disagree about torture and the writ of habeas corpus. On this vote there will be long memories - and Democratic primary challenges at the first opportunity.

Goodbye 109th, Don't Let the Door Hit You
So in the end, as the 109th Congress gets ready to adjourn and ask for your vote, remember which senators failed the test of governance at every level. The Senate, which has long held itself out to be a deliberative body of reasoned discourse, turned itself into nothing more than a rush-express rubber stamp for the worst excesses of the executive branch. Which begs the question: Will they object next session when George Bush appoints a horse to their chamber?

And can there be any doubt the horse would do a better job?