In 1789, the Founding Fathers came up with a system of
checks and balances to keep kingly powers out of the hands
of American presidents. But in the 1970s and '80s, a faction
of Republican loyalists, outraged by the fall of the
imperial presidency after Watergate and the Vietnam War,
abandoned conservatives' traditional suspicion of
concentrated government power. These men hatched a plot that
would allow the White House to return to, or even surpass,
the virtually unchecked powers that Richard Nixon had
briefly tried to wield. Congress would be defanged, and the
commander-in-chief would be able to assert a unilateral
dominance both at home and abroad.
Today, this
plot is coming to fruition. As Takeover reveals, the
Bush-Cheney administration has succeeded in seizing vast
powers for the presidency by throwing off many of the
restraints placed upon it by Congress, the courts, and the
Constitution. This timely book unveils the secret
machinations behind the headlines, explaining the links
between warrantless wiretapping and the President Bush's
Supreme Court nominees, between the torture debate and the
secrecy surrounding Vice President Cheney's energy task
force, and between the "faith-based initiative" and the
holding of US citizens without trial as "enemy combatants."
It tells, for the first time, the full story of a hidden
agenda three decades in the making, laying out how a group
of true believers set out to establish monarchical executive
powers that, in the words of one conservative critic, "will
lie around like a loaded weapon" ready to be picked up by
any future president.
Brilliantly reported and
deftly told, Takeover is a searing investigation into
how the constitutional balance of our democracy is in danger
of being permanently altered. For anyone who cares about
America's past, present, and future, it is essential reading.
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