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The Accountable Presidency After 9/11
W. W. Norton
March 2012
On Sale: March 12, 2012
336 pages
ISBN: 0393081338
EAN: 9780393081336
Kindle: B005LW5JWQ
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Political
The surprising truth behind Barack Obama's decision
to continue many of his predecessor's counterterrorism
policies. Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11
sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In
fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our
post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions,
military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and
more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of
presidential authority. But these new powers have been met
with thousands of barely visible legal and political
constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government
lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our
unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also
unprecedentedly accountable. These constraints are the
key to understanding why Obama continued the Bush
counterterrorism program, and in this light, the events of
the last decade should be seen as a victory, not a failure,
of American constitutional government. We have actually
preserved the framers’ original idea of a balanced
constitution, despite the vast increase in presidential
power made necessary by this age of permanent emergency.
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