The Founding Guys feared tyranny above all else. That’s why they crafted a Constitution with built-in protections against tyranny. These protections are referred to as “separation of powers” or “checks and balances.”

This page nicely explains the protections at an 11th-grade level. At the federal level, “separation of powers” calls for the government to be divided into three branches, with each branch having particular powers. At the same time, each branch has certain powers over the other branches. This is the “checks and balances” part — it prevents any one branch from gaining too much power over the other two. Here’s another kid-level page explaining the same thing. If you went to school in the United States you should have learned this stuff by no later than the sixth grade.

It appears Dear Leader napped through sixth grade Social Studies. Oh, he got the “separation of powers” part of the lesson. He likes that part. But the “checks and balances” part — not so much. Bush’s “unitary executive” doctrine says that he can ignore the other two branches of government whenever he likes, because any attempt to oversee or regulate what Bush wants to do is an encroachment on his powers.

What is the “unitary executive” doctrine? Jennifer Van Bergen wrote for FindLaw,

The unitary executive doctrine arises out of a theory called “departmentalism,” or “coordinate construction.” According to legal scholars Christopher Yoo, Steven Calabresi, and Anthony Colangelo, the coordinate construction approach “holds that all three branches of the federal government have the power and duty to interpret the Constitution.” According to this theory, the president may (and indeed, must) interpret laws, equally as much as the courts.

As a practical matter, since the executive branch is the one that executes and enforces law, this doctrine says the President can override whatever Congress and the Courts might think and put his own revision of law into effect. Van Bergen continues,

The coordinate construction theory counters the long-standing notion of “judicial supremacy,” articulated by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, which held that the Court is the final arbiter of what is and is not the law. Marshall famously wrote there: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

Of course, the President has a duty not to undermine his own office, as University of Miami law professor A. Michael Froomkin notes. And, as Kelley points out, the President is bound by his oath of office and the “Take Care clause” to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and to “take care” that the laws are faithfully executed. And those duties require, in turn, that the President interpret what is, and is not constitutional, at least when overseeing the actions of executive agencies.

However, Bush’s recent actions make it clear that he interprets the coordinate construction approach extremely aggressively. In his view, and the view of his Administration, that doctrine gives him license to overrule and bypass Congress or the courts, based on his own interpretations of the Constitution — even where that violates long-established laws and treaties, counters recent legislation that he has himself signed, or (as shown by recent developments in the Padilla case) involves offering a federal court contradictory justifications for a detention.

This is a form of presidential rebellion against Congress and the courts, and possibly a violation of President Bush’s oath of office, as well.

After all, can it be possible that that oath means that the President must uphold the Constitution only as he construes it – and not as the federal courts do?

And can it be possible that the oath means that the President need not uphold laws he simply doesn’t like – even though they were validly passed by Congress and signed into law by him?

Also at FindLaw, John Dean wrote in “Vice President Cheney and The Fight Over ‘Inherent’ Presidential Powers: His Attempt to Swing the Pendulum Back Began Long Before 9/11,”

[Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales’ position is that the President can make his own rules, notwithstanding the existence of a federal statute – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – that is directly on point, expressly prohibiting warrantless electronic surveillance. For the Attorney General to defend such a view defies “the equilibrium of our constitutional system” to use Chairman Specter’s words – treating Congress’ clear word on the matter, as if had never been spoken at all.

Warrantless wiretapping, moreover, is not just a separation-of-powers violation; it is also a federal crime.

In effect, Bush thinks he’s above the law.

Equally illogical is Vice President Dick Cheney’s position — and if anyone does not believe that Cheney is not behind this ruckus, they do not know Cheney or his history. Let me start by describing his give-no-quarter stance.

After the Attorney General’s testimony concluded, and given the doubts expressed about it by both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, PBS newsman Jim Lehrer asked Cheney if President Bush would cooperate with Congress to “settle some of the legal disputes about the NSA surveillance program?” Cheney responded with a polite, hell no. (Incidentally, this was Cheney’s first interview with other than a conservative news person.) “We believe, Jim, that we have all the legal authority we need,” Cheney said. “[The President] indicated the other day he’s willing to listen to ideas from the Congress, and certainly they have the right and the responsibility to suggest whatever they want to suggest.”

The President will listen to ideas and suggestions from the Congress, but he will not follow a law it has written (and a prior President has signed into law) on the subject? This is not exactly a logical stance.

No, but it is setting us up for a nice constitutional crisis.

Joyce Appleby and Gary Hart write,

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working in the White House, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the “war on terror” is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this “war” can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.

“We now confront a constitutional crisis,” say Appleby and Hart, who bring up some opinions offered by James Madison in the Federalist Papers to explain why this is not how it’s supposed to work. And, frankly, you don’t have to be a lawyer or constitutional scholar to see this is true.

Much has been made of the fact that Cheney et al. want to “restore” presidential power that Congress stripped away after Watergate. This bit of history leaves out the fact that by Nixon’s time presidential power had expanded to an unprecedented degree. It’s not as if Congress took powers away that had been assumed by all the other presidents before Nixon. Indeed, it was a common belief among Whigs that the President should do little more than execute the will of Congress. At various times — the latter part of the Andrew Johnson administration comes to mind — Congress pretty much ran everything, and the President was little more than a figurehead who was cleaned up and trotted out for ceremonial purposes. I’m not saying that was ideal; I’m just saying that’s how it was at times. What Cheney wants to restore is not some Golden Age of Constitutional Originalism; he just wants to restore the Golden Age of Nixon.

But what is disheartening — not surprising, but disheartening — is the degree to which allegedly “libertarian” conservatives either defend the “unitary executive” doctrine or swat it away as some niggling detail only important to liberals. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this here and elsewhere.

… many Bush defenders are now arguing, as they must, that a “wartime” President’s power is so vast that it even includes this law-breaking power.

But the same individuals peddling this theory are simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called such claims “foolish and irresponsible” in the very same Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not “follow the strictures of” (i.e., obey) the law, and the President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to a “dictatorial position” in the very same Press Conference where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a crime to do so.

Bush supporters argue that the unitary executive doctrine does not amount to giving Bush dictatorial power, but they’ve yet to articulate where the limits are. Instead, they wave the flaming WTC tower and insist Bush must have these powers to protect us from terrorists.

Susie Madrak wrote today,

People have this Saturday-matinee picture in their heads of what a coup looks like. It involves black-and-white footage of modern-day Nazis, and tanks in the street. They believe those who destroy our democracy will telegraph their intentions in such a way that any action movie fan will easily identify the bad guys.

It never occurs to them the bad guys won’t sell themselves as such, because we are a nation largely immune to political nuance. And that is why we are watching our great democratic experiment being flushed down the bowl.

God help us.

Along these lines — go read one of the all-time great anti-Bush rants. Jane Smiley says it all.