Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

by Charlie Savage

Book Overview

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,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316118052
• ISBN13: 9780316118057
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The makings of an evil empire

With each successive year, the Bush-Cheney administration gets scarier and undoubtedly more out of control. Political grabs for power have always been the name of the game in Washington, but the current White House has taken it to new and unprecedented levels, subverting the Constitution along the way. Charlie Savage's terrific new book, "Takeover", charts the "progress" of the Bush years and with it offers up some startling results. It's been known for some time now that the run up to the war in Iraq was based on conjecture. As Savage reminds us, Tony Blair's cabinet had correctly surmised that (regarding the potential invasion) "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". This was only the beginning for the Bush people and, having gotten their way with that, the rush to accumulate power within the executive branch of government was underway. Castrating Congress, disregarding the courts and avoiding public opinion, the administration went on a tear. Legalisms became the norm in order to sidestep the law as the White House pulled the wagons in closer and tighter. One of the main thrusts of "Takeover" is a discussion about Unitary Executive Theory which amounts to an idea that an executive can ignore previous laws, precedents that are attached to them and to do pretty much at will as he so desires. This often takes the form of "signing statements". It is here that Savage really makes his case for how far out on a limb Bush-Cheney have gone. With their team of lawyers working seemingly around the clock to get around anything that might get in the way, (and in their mind, "weaken" the executive branch) Savage adeptly and successfully crashes their party. He documents the egregiousness and the shameful tactics that Bush has gone to with results that will be long-lasting. The precedents they set now are really the worst part and any future president can then look back on these years and claim them as their own. In the wrong hands, this could be devastating. I highly recommend "Takeover" for the author's uncovering and recounting yet more of the disgrace that this administration has brought to America. It's a searing account of the past six and a half years in Washington and portends an even more frightful last year or so with Bush-Cheney in control. One would hope that Charlie Savage is working on a sequel that will deliver a final exposé to this most corrupt and harmful presidency.

A Necessary Evil, A Must Read!

The number of books being written about the excesses of the Bush years increase almost daily, and keeping up with all of them is becoming nothing short of impossible. That said, keep in mind that not much is new from volume to volume, but "Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency..." covers most of the issues competently if not completely. It is difficult for some readers, especially those who refuse to see the inadequecies and subversions of this presidency to read books that are not flattering, but hopefully they can leave their ideology for a while. Had some of the events that took place within the oval office during the last six years occured during the previous administration there would have been very credible reasons to seek impeachment, and the failure of Congress to demand a better accounting of the insane power grabs is incomprehensible, but partisan politics seems to be the only measure to take, not take action. America has lost so much credibility during this imperial presidency that it will take decades to even begin to repair some of the damage, and then only if our politicians on both sides of the aisle wake up, and soon.

If only we had known then what we know now

There are "oh, now I get it!" moments on nearly every page of this highly readable, superbly-researched and sourced book. Although the title implies that this might be a book about George W. Bush, it's actually the story of how Dick Cheney visualized, masterminded, and executed the destruction of Constitutional limits to the power of the President. Savage shows us that starting with his work in the Nixon administration as Rumsfeld's assistant at the Office of Economic Opportunity, continuing with his term as Wyoming's representative to Congress, and then during his service in the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. bush, Cheney worked relentlessly to formulate his vision of an imperial presidency, and form a team that would assist him in stripping away Congressional oversight of the actions of the President. By the time he was selected to be George Bush's running mate for the Presidency, all the pieces and characters were in place, and the rest is history. Savage looked at all the documents, court rulings, and white papers relating to Cheney's work, and in this book makes a powerful case that we would have known what we were in for today if we had studied the history of this man. It's a case-study of how to demolish democracy. This is compelling and mandatory reading for anyone who cares about the Constitution of the United States and the future of our democracy.

Brilliant!!!

Picking up from where he left off with his Pulitzer winning, April 2006 story, detailing President Bush's use of signing statements to disregard laws passed by Congress, Charlie Savage continues down the path to reveal astonishing details about Bush-Cheney machinations, and manipulations of power to move hidden agendas that would seriously challenge the constitutional balance of our democracy. ``If a president has the power to instruct the government not to enforce laws that he alone has declared to be unconstitutional, then he can free himself from the need to obey laws that restrict his own actions,'' Savage writes. The book forms mostly on Charlie Savage's work for the Boston Globe to offer an expansive discussion of the longstanding debate over executive authority. Savage writes that Bush administration has engineered nothing less than a far-reaching power grab, avowing its dominance on issues ranging from torture, wiretapping, executive privilege to the hiring of interns, and has surpassed Richard Nixon when it comes to spying on citizens, ignoring the law and trampling on the Constitution. Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, is not just another book on ""Bush-Bashing". It's investigative journalism at its best, and on par with Bob Woodward's "State of Denial." Highly Recommended!!! N.Sivakumar Author of: America Misunderstood: What a Second Bush Victory Meant to the Rest of the World

Well Researched, Thoughtful, and Important!

There have been lots of books about the Bush-Cheney administration, and considerable coverage of efforts to increase presidential power. However, "Takeover's" well-researched, thoughtful and important material requires no outside leverage to gain a prominent spot amongst them. Savage's summary asserts that Bush-Cheney have succeeded in seizing vast powers for the presidency by ignoring many of the restraints placed on it by Congress, the courts, and the Constitution. Warrantless waretapping, politicization of the Justice Department and the torture debate, use of "signing statements" to claim a right to defy new laws, efforts to impose greater control over military JAG lawyers, secrecy behind Cheney's energy task force (and innumerable other government actions), and holding U.S. citizens without trial as "enemy combatants" have all served this end. Savage clearly sees Cheney as the force behind these moves, citing Cheney's earlier experiences and actions in government, beginning in the Nixon administration within the Office of Economic Opportunity with Don Rumsfeld, on to episodes of classified information disclosure (eg. illegal CIA spying on Americans, U.S. submarines eavesdropping on Soviet cables), Cheney's restricting access to President Ford by those with competing viewpoints (also reduced likelihood of leaks), and efforts within Congress to support Reagan-Bush power grabs (eg. forcing executive agencies to submit proposed rules to the White House before they could take effect). The Bush-Cheney powergrab began immediately upon assuming the office. White House Counsel Gonzales was assigned a support role almost on the administration's opening day. September 11 clearly was a God-send to the Bush-Cheney efforts - protecting national security became the all-purpose rationale for more secrecy and more presidential power. However, it was not until January, 2002 that Cheney openly took ownership of the agenda to expand these powers. Secrecy was extended wherever possible, even to rather mundane topics under the logic that even little pieces could be put together to provide information to terrorists. Republican congressional leadership was only too willing to assist by failing to oversee executive actions, and even restricting congressmen from mentioning the contents of intelligence authorization bills, for fear of criminal prosecution and expulsion. The administration also succeeded in shutting down embarrassing court cases (eg. claiming failure to pursue espionage) on the grounds of needed secrecy. Finally, suppressing scientific findings and rewriting reports has also been a major Bush secrecy tool. Bush's power-grab even included abrogating signed international treaties. One of the administration's earliest actions was informing the Soviets that we would no longer be bound by the 1972 ABM treaty. The Geneva Accords followed, described as "quaint" by Gonzales, was later circumvented through a number of actions - Guantanamo and Abu