The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis of Authority in American Government

279 Pages·2008·1.91 MB·English

by  Alasdair Roberts

The Collapse of Fortress Bush

Alasdair Roberts
The Collapse of Fortress Bush
The Crisis of Authority in American Government
a
New York University Press • New York and London
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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2008 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts, Alasdair (Alasdair Scott)
The collapse of fortress Bush : the crisis of authority in American
government / Alasdair Roberts.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-7606-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-7606-X (cloth : alk. paper)
1. United States—Politics and government—2001– 2. United States—
Foreign relations—2001– 3. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946–
4. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946– —Friends and associates.
5. Authority. 6. Executive power—United States. 7. Political leadership—
United States. 8. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. 9. War on
Terrorism, 2001– 10. United States—Social conditions—1980– I. Title.
E902.R625 2008
973.93—dc22 2007034068
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In framing a government which is to be administered by men
over men,the great difficulty lies in this:You must first enable
the government to control the governed;and in the next
place oblige it to control itself.
—James Madison,The Federalist No.51

Contents
Preface ix
1 ACrisis of Authority 1
2 Citizens and Aliens 24
3 Home Alone 58
4 Soothing the Market 84
5 Cakewalk 106
6 The Collapse of Fortress Bush 135
7 Beyond the Imperial Presidency 164
Notes 177
Index 251
About the Author 266
vii

Preface
The aim of this book is to ask why the U.S. government reacted to the
9/11 crisis and its aftermath as it did. This is obviously an important
question—for Americans who want assurance that the nation will be
defended against future attacks, for allied countries that share similar
risks, which may be aggravated or diminished by U.S. policy, and for
many other countries, and foreign citizens, who are affected directly
by the exercise of American power.
Within the United States there is a widely held understanding
about the proper answer to this question. It includes claims about
what happened and why. The conventional view says that the 9/11 at-
tacks led to radical changes in government policy in many areas. One
of the objectives of the administration, largely achieved, was said to be
an unprecedented and dangerous concentration of executive author-
ity. These radical changes were said to have come about because key
personalities—President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Che-
ney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ash-
croft, and a coterie of advisers—had sharply defined views about the
need for change and were adroit at exploiting the opportunity created
by the 9/11 attacks.
It is easy to see why this interpretation of what happened after
9/11 gained popularity. As a rule, stories about radical disruptions of
the status quo are more newsworthy than stories of incremental
change, and stories about the clash of personalities are more easily
conveyed than stories about weaknesses in institutions or systems of
government. We like tales about struggles between heroes and villains
in which the stakes are very large.1 Furthermore, this particular story,
which can be framed as one about popular resistance against an over-
reaching executive, plays on a rhetorical tradition that is deeply rooted
in American history and culture.
For critics of the Bush administration, this conventional narrative
about the 9/11 crisis and its aftermath is both alarming and reassur-
ix