Executive Privilege
On signing the campaign-finance-reform bill.

March 21, 2002 2:40 p.m.

o, President Bush thinks the campaign-finance-reform bill he's going to sign "does present some legitimate constitutional questions."

But he seems remarkably incurious about what the answers to those questions might be — as if it's a minor matter to be worried about by someone else, once he's gotten the New York Times and John McCain out of his hair.

As far as we know, Bush hasn't asked the Justice Department about it or his own White House Counsel.

This represents more than a politician trying to dodge a fight he finds politically inconvenient, but a deeper malady in our political culture: the idea that the Constitution is something for judges, and judges alone, to interpret (and shape, mold, and generally mangle).

Ramesh Ponnuru persuasively analyzed this tendency in the last NR. It is a trend that, at bottom, is inimical to self-government.

What made John McCain's primary campaign so exciting at the beginning — and there was magic in those New Hampshire meeting rooms — was its call to service, its defense of self-government as a worthy, even heroic, enterprise.

And, here, now that we have reached what in some sense is the fruition of McCain's primary crusade, we have the highest elected official in the land simply punting to the courts on important constitutional questions directly bearing on the ability of political parties and individuals to participate in our elections.

This is distressing, but is also galling. The Bush administration is ever vigilant in protecting its own prerogatives, whether it's the privacy of Cheney's energy task-force meetings or Tom Ridge's right not testify before Congress.

The administration is willing to get roundly beaten up, even by Hill Republicans, in defense of these positions. But when it comes to the privileges and prerogatives of ordinary people — well, those are "constitutional questions" in which the administration has considerably less interest.

When John McCain isn't smearing politics, and instead celebrates it as a noble enterprise, he's on to something. It often has ennobling moments.

But President Bush affixing his signature to a bill he's thinks may be unconstitutional won't be one of them.