At Ease, Mr. President by Garry Wills

The New York Times
January 27, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
At Ease, Mr. President

By GARRY
WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

WE hear constantly now about "our commander in chief." The word has become a
synonym for "president." It is said that we "elect a commander in chief." It is
asked whether this or that candidate is "worthy to be our commander in chief."

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I
am not in the Army.

I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the "Saturday Night Massacre"
(as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry
being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of
staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox's firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney
general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and
resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department,
William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his
dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.

What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, "You know what it
means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his
team cannot execute it." This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr.
Haig's later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that "Constitutionally
... I'm in control."

President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus's commander in chief. The president
is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of
National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is
clear on this: "The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy
of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into
the actual service of the United States."

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave
himself the proper title, "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United
States." That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just
"commander in chief," or even "commander in chief of the United States." This
reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large
is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people
submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch
takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from
the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken "for
the duration." But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed
in 1941 has never been lifted, and "the duration" has become the norm. World War
II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified
information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated
into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than
the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions,
"renditions," suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture
and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars
— If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all
our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient
clearance.

When Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James
Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no
longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified,
then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the
commander in chief.

The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous
and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways
that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those
aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in
chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter
and returns the salute of marines.

That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a
real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was
not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as
close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the
telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the
Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided
military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by
caudillos.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's prescient last book, "Secrecy," traced the
ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the
very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How
can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied
knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because
these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens.
Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to
blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our
Constitution.

Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is
the author, most recently, of "What Paul
Meant."

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