My Comments: I’m conflicted. On one hand I’m disturbed by the growing threat to our individual privacy as demonstrated by what the NSA has been doing and will continue to do. On the other hand I’m disturbed by the threats I feel coming from those on the right who are more inclined to live in the past than in the future.

The past is just that, the past. The only thing we can influence going forward is the future, and I don’t want us to become a country of old white men, who ruled the day as little as 50 years ago. What was “normal” for them is not normal for me today. That’s in spite of my being an old white man, but living in 2014 and excited by what the future holds.

The article written by Edward Luce asserts certain things about the presidency, and in particular, Barack Obama. I have little doubt Luce is right, and I’m still a fan of Obama. I reject what the Tea Party people see as a threat to our future as free Americans. For me, “free Americans” include ALL of us, not just a select few. That’s not to say he is not flawed, but compared to the Ted Cruz look alikes, I’m OK with the current leadership.

By Edward Luce / The Financial Times / March 9, 2014

Forty years ago, Arthur Schlesinger coined the term “imperial presidency” to describe the growing power of the US executive. Today we are told it is shrinking. At home, President Barack Obama is impotent – unable to persuade Congress to confirm minor ambassadorial appointments. Abroad, he is in full pursuit of what Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, calls a “geopolitical taper” – underlined by his tepid response to the challenge from Vladimir Putin.
America’s executive branch is getting weaker, they say; Mr Obama will be remembered for the post-imperial presidency.

The argument is mostly nonsense. In the first instance, it confuses means with preference. Mr Obama is indeed loath to employ conventional US forces overseas, whether in the Middle East or the Black Sea. He was elected on a mandate to wind down wars and he is not about to revisit that in Crimea. Critics may worry about the White House’s willingness to threaten a full withdrawal from Afghanistan. But that is beside the point. If Mr Obama wanted to occupy it indefinitely he could do so with little reference to Congress. In 2008 George W Bush barely even considered confronting Russia militarily over its semi-invasion of Georgia. That would have risked everything. Mr Obama is firmly in the mainstream in believing the US should not threaten war with a rival nuclear power unless it or its treaty allies are under direct threat.

In contrast, he has no compunction about using less conventional military tools when he wants – and without consulting anyone outside of the executive branch. The Pentagon’s latest budget captures this well. Headline writers focused on the planned shrinkage of the US army to 440,000 troops, which would be the lowest since before the second world war. Hawks describe the budget as confirming a US in full retreat. In reality, soldiers are now vastly better equipped. In 2001 it cost $2,300 a year to equip a US marine. Now it is more than $20,000. As in the private sector, downsizing reflects growing productivity. The Pentagon uses robots, too.

Even under the new budget, overall US defence spending remains almost two-thirds higher than it was before the September 2001 attacks. Prof Ferguson describes these as “deep cuts”. Tucked into the proposal, however, are increases to the US drone fleet, special forces and cyber attack technology. Mr Obama wants to expand the number of US special forces from 66,000 to 69,000. And he plans a continued growth in the Pentagon’s robotic warfare capabilities. These are tools that the president can use – and has – with impunity. Congress and the media are only informed afterwards, if at all. At any rate, Congress is unlikely to agree to the proposed cuts. They are probably dead on arrival. There is little doubt it will give robots the green light.

But the biggest growth in the imperial presidency is in the data intelligence complex – the shadowy network of US agencies and private-sector contractors that operates largely beyond the control of Congress and the courts. There are 854,000 private contractors alone, all of whom have security clearance. Mike Lofgren, a former Republican congressional staffer, recently wrote about the US “deep state” – “a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country … only intermittently controlled by the visible state whose leaders we choose”. In the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations, Mr Obama has shown belated angst about the extraordinary powers at his disposal. He has even “welcomed” the debate Mr Snowden’s leaks have caused, while also vowing to prosecute him as a traitor.

Through his words, Mr Obama suggests he is reluctant to use his vast capabilities. Through his actions, he conveys the opposite. In January Mr Obama rejected the advice of his own panel of legal advisers to take data storage out of the hands of National Security Agency. The NSA is proceeding with a storage centre in Utah that can contain a yottabyte of information – equal to 500 quintillion (that is, thousand trillion) pages of text. To you and me, that means infinite. No other facility on earth will come close. It will be able to store every electronic trace of everybody’s lives.

Mr Obama also rejected curbs on the secret 11-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that issues the warrants the NSA needs to tap into people’s phone logs and emails. In 2012 the court received 1,789 requests, one of which was dropped. All others were waved through. There is no reason to believe anything changed in 2013.

Mr Obama promises self-restraint. But even if we assume the “deep state” follows his orders and keeps him informed of what it is doing, his example will not bind his successors.

It is unarguable that on the domestic front Mr Obama’s presidency is as weak as any in living memory. That may also be the reality for whoever replaces him. Partisan gridlock is here to stay. But beneath the surface life of Washington politics, another state is operating beyond any reasonable system of accountability. In the theatre of US politics, Mr Obama looks like all talk and no action. Behind the scenes, he has more power at his fingertips than any US president in history.

To test the theory that he embodies a post-imperial presidency, imagine Richard Nixon were president instead of Mr Obama. Would you trust Congress to provide oversight of Nixon’s data-intelligence complex? Would you be talking about a weakening US executive? Neither would I.