Simple. I’d do just what Ike did. Pull out of the useless foreign war, concentrate ferociously on domestic infrastructure. Open the gate for nuclear power and high-speed rail. Impose heavy tariffs on China, buy back our debt from China and resell it to American citizens with higher interest rates.

Under what circumstances does a government gain power and then voluntarily relinquish it?
Short answer: it doesn’t unless it’s forced to and even then that can be a long and frustrating process.
Better answer: prevent government from acquiring this power in the first place. The major reason I’m very skeptical of any Republican running on a platform of “limited government” right now is that when they were in power, they actively pushed for massive expansions of government. If and when Republicans do return to office, if they work to roll back the damage they did, then I might start trusting them again.
Practical answer: the changes that came about after 9/11 are here to stay for the time being, aside from some work around the margins. The damage has already been done. So it’s a matter of who is best suited to wield the Ring responsibly. Last year, I thought both Obama and McCain would have made better and more responsible leaders. What tipped me over the edge was the selection of Sarah Palin.
If anything at all had happened to McCain while in office (and let’s not forget he’s an elderly cancer survivor), Palin would have gotten all of this power. That would have been like handing the Ring over directly to the Uruk-Hai.

Geoff, great post–I agree with all your points.
If anything at all had happened to McCain while in office (and let’s not forget he’s an elderly cancer survivor), Palin would have gotten all of this power. That would have been like handing the Ring over directly to the Uruk-Hai.
On the other hand, that’s a bit unfair to the Uruk-Hai, you becha….

Just as a matter of factual comment, it’s best to distinguish Bush I, Bush II and Obama. Bush I was the really bad stuff (regular use of renditions, torture memos, etc.). Bush II developed in the second term, especially after 2006–strong but controlled anti-terror measures. Obama is essentially Bush II. So, as a matter of historical record, yes, some powers were surrendered.
Also, Joe Biden (no matter what you think of his intelligence) is self-consciously trying to restore some normalcy to the office of VP–no staffs on steroids, etc.

The one (somewhat side) point I would make is that all this does is point out how smart Jack Goldsmith really is. Back on May 18, in http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-cheney-fallacy?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2 he said:
“But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. Packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric, it turns out, are vitally important to the legitimacy of terrorism policies.”
Now here we are in the next January ruminating on the exact same central idea.

Handing Barack, Rohm and Eric the Patriot Act is tantamount to giving junior high boys the key to the back door of the girls locker room. (Joe Biden (no matter what you think of his intelligence)…I’m actually waiting to see it before I can form an opinion. Some people walk into a room and fill it, he walks in and creates instant fear.

From Obama’a perspective there is very little up side to making changes, and huge potential risks. If Obama makes substantive changed and there is a major, successful terrorist attack, his political enemies would have a field day. On the other hand, if there is a terrorist attack and he hasn’t changed much from what the previous administration put in place, his enemies have much less to get a grip on. Politics. Yech.

The historical archetype of relinquishing power was Cincinattus; George Washington was considered a second Cincinattus by the first generation of this country.

Under what circumstances does a government gain power and then voluntarily relinquish it?
Historically this has never happened. While individuals have voluntarily relinquished power, governments never have.
Unilateral disarmament only comes about when someone is certain that they are safe. Is America safe? Is American democracy safe?
I’d sadly answer “no” to these questions. We have real enemies abroad, and we have “the ME generation” in charge of our political parties. Fear and immaturity are the guiding principles of the day, and in such an environment even George Washington wouldn’t give up an ounce of the power currently vested in the Office of the President.

I agree with Boz, Obama policies essentially mirror Bush second term.
Jmaes Jay Carafano

Mr. Dreher @ 9:14 AM writes:
“Under what circumstances does a government gain power and then voluntarily relinquish it?”
None that I am aware of.
There are two reasons for this: first, once a State apparatus enters into a certain area of Human life, it attracts supporters who will benefit by said entry. We see this in the de facto nationalization of US automakers GM and Chrysler; those takeovers were done for the purpose of retaining union support in politically key states. We also see this in areas like entitlement spending; both SocSec and Medicare/Medicaid have support of millions of beneficiaries, both recipients of checks and employees of the agencies that administer those programs. This phenomenon is a subspecies of a group of political phenomena known as “rent-seeking”.
Secondly, Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy takes over. For those of you who are not aware of the Iron Law, it goes something like this: an organization contains exactly two sorts of people; those who are interested in carrying out the stated aims of the organization (school, corporation, whatever), and those who are interested primarily in preserving and expanding the reach and power of the organization as an organization. In any organization, over time, the second type of individual will come to dominate, at the expense of the first type—and of the organization in itself.
In the (increasingly misnamed) “private sector”, commercial competition imposes some limits on the ability of the second type to establish dominance: below a certain level of wealth and power, market forces can and often will drive organizations out of existence.
Once a State apparatus reaches a certain level of both knowledge and complexity in its influence in a certain area, we see interaction of a quasi-incestuous nature between government and “private-sector” organizations that is designed to preserve both. Most notably, we see this in the financial bailouts since 2008. Treasury Secretary Geithner and his predecessors came into their jobs from organizations like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup—prime beneficiaries of central-government bailout funds.
The primary problem with this interaction is that it prevents a natural circulation of elites (described by V. Pareto and G. Mosca, among others) and the “creative destruction” and reallocation of resources (described by economic theorists including J. Schumpeter, F. Von Hayek and L. Von Mises, among others) necessary to continued economic healthy. At its worst, one observes a rapid expansion of State authority, in both breadth and depth of control, until the political and economic life of a society comes to look like that of the former USSR, or the current regimes in Cuba and North Korea, where geriatric “nomenklaturas” (high bureaucracy) steeped in an ideology control virtually all economic activity.
There are two possible solutions to the stasis generated by such a setup: gradual “reform” and reallocation of economic and political resources directed by the leadership to more closely match actual economic facts (certain Byzantine emperors were very good at this, for example) or external pressures—defeat in warfare being a classic—that reveal the essential weakness of the leadership cadre and result in the entire regime being overthrown and new elites allowed to emerge.
From where I sit, the American regime is far along in the stasis-inducing process. Some 50 % of all economic activity is directly or indirectly controlled by the central government or its subsidiaries. With the institution of TARP and similar programs, large sectors of the economy have been effectively merged with the central government—automobiles, energy (“cap-and-trade”), finance. Health care has been partially nationalized ever since 1965, and the current regime’s “reform bill” will guarantee its direct nationalization within 10 years.
In each historical example of this sort of takeover, there has been an accepted dominant ideology that the governing elite uses to justify its rule. In Nazi Germany, it was “National Socialism”. In the USSR and Red China, it was (and is) Marxism-Leninism. In modern America and other post-Western nations (Western Europe and Japan), it might be called “compassionate welfare/warfare-ism.” In all cases, the ideologies involved are the same: a belief in the natural superiority and right to rule of a technologically-superior elite, as described by Hayek in “The Road to Serfdom”. Their stated motivations may be different—“compassion” in the case of post-progressive America or the dominance of a particular racial or class segment—but the actual effect is the same: an accepted “right” to control individuals on a society-wide scale.
What makes the present situation potentially truly terrifying is the modern neo-totalitarians’ access to modern information-manipulation, information-management and surveillance technology. The level of regulation and depth of control that this makes possible is at least two orders of magnitude higher than anything that Hitler or Stalin could conceive of—-and they still managed to kill millions and control the lives of many more.
Stalin had a potential nation of Pavlik Morozovs—informers for the State. Modern computer technology is well on the way towards giving an American elite a nation of the Borg.
For all our sakes, we had better hope that resistance is NOT futile.
Your servant,
Lord Karth

Mr. Dreher @ 9:14 AM writes:
“Under what circumstances does a government gain power and then voluntarily relinquish it?”
None that I am aware of.
There are two reasons for this: first, once a State apparatus enters into a certain area of Human life, it attracts supporters who will benefit by said entry. We see this in the de facto nationalization of US automakers GM and Chrysler; those takeovers were done for the purpose of retaining union support in politically key states. We also see this in areas like entitlement spending; both SocSec and Medicare/Medicaid have support of millions of beneficiaries, both recipients of checks and employees of the agencies that administer those programs. This phenomenon is a subspecies of a group of political phenomena known as “rent-seeking”.
Secondly, Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy takes over. For those of you who are not aware of the Iron Law, it goes something like this: an organization contains exactly two sorts of people; those who are interested in carrying out the stated aims of the organization (school, corporation, whatever), and those who are interested primarily in preserving and expanding the reach and power of the organization as an organization. In any organization, over time, the second type of individual will come to dominate, at the expense of the first type—and of the organization in itself.
In the (increasingly misnamed) “private sector”, commercial competition imposes some limits on the ability of the second type to establish dominance: below a certain level of wealth and power, market forces can and often will drive organizations out of existence.
Once a State apparatus reaches a certain level of both knowledge and complexity in its influence in a certain area, we see interaction of a quasi-incestuous nature between government and “private-sector” organizations that is designed to preserve both. Most notably, we see this in the financial bailouts since 2008. Treasury Secretary Geithner and his predecessors came into their jobs from organizations like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup—prime beneficiaries of central-government bailout funds.
The primary problem with this interaction is that it prevents a natural circulation of elites (described by V. Pareto and G. Mosca, among others) and the “creative destruction” and reallocation of resources (described by economic theorists including J. Schumpeter, F. Von Hayek and L. Von Mises, among others) necessary to continued economic healthy. At its worst, one observes a rapid expansion of State authority, in both breadth and depth of control, until the political and economic life of a society comes to look like that of the former USSR, or the current regimes in Cuba and North Korea, where geriatric “nomenklaturas” (high bureaucracy) steeped in an ideology control virtually all economic activity.
There are two possible solutions to the stasis generated by such a setup: gradual “reform” and reallocation of economic and political resources directed by the leadership to more closely match actual economic facts (certain Byzantine emperors were very good at this, for example) or external pressures—defeat in warfare being a classic—that reveal the essential weakness of the leadership cadre and result in the entire regime being overthrown and new elites allowed to emerge.
From where I sit, the American regime is far along in the stasis-inducing process. Some 50 % of all economic activity is directly or indirectly controlled by the central government or its subsidiaries. With the institution of TARP and similar programs, large sectors of the economy have been effectively merged with the central government—automobiles, energy (“cap-and-trade”), finance. Health care has been partially nationalized ever since 1965, and the current regime’s “reform bill” will guarantee its direct nationalization within 10 years.
In each historical example of this sort of takeover, there has been an accepted dominant ideology that the governing elite uses to justify its rule. In Nazi Germany, it was “National Socialism”. In the USSR and Red China, it was (and is) Marxism-Leninism. In modern America and other post-Western nations (Western Europe and Japan), it might be called “compassionate welfare/warfare-ism.” In all cases, the ideologies involved are the same: a belief in the natural superiority and right to rule of a technologically-superior elite, as described by Hayek in “The Road to Serfdom”. Their stated motivations may be different—“compassion” in the case of post-progressive America or the dominance of a particular racial or class segment—but the actual effect is the same: an accepted “right” to control individuals on a society-wide scale.
What makes the present situation potentially truly terrifying is the modern neo-totalitarians’ access to modern information-manipulation, information-management and surveillance technology. The level of regulation and depth of control that this makes possible is at least two orders of magnitude higher than anything that Hitler or Stalin could conceive of—-and they still managed to kill millions and control the lives of many more.
Stalin had a potential nation of Pavlik Morozovs—informers for the State. Modern computer technology is well on the way towards giving an American elite a nation of the Borg.
For all our sakes, we had better hope that resistance is NOT futile.
Your servant,
Lord Karth

Don’t overlook the fact that by and large, people don’t run for office in order to impose an ideology on an unwilling populace. That’s not to say they start out with certain ideological conceptions about what solutions might be best. But faced with crises, they pick out the approaches they think will serve the country best. Governing is much more outcome oriented than people who haven’t studied it much imagine. You see this with Obama’s continuation of Bush’s counter-terrorism strategy, with some tactical modifications. And, on the other side, with Bush’s decision to bail out components of the financial industry when the crisis hit in the fall of 2008. Experts have pointed out that had McCain won, he would have largely done what Obama did with the bank and auto industry bailouts. Remember, McCain promised during the Michigan primary that he was going to bring jobs back to Michigan, a state already struggling with job losses before the economic crisis. He certainly would not have let the U.S. auto industry collapse and to let foreign companies be the last left standing, any more than Obama was going to do so. And given convention wisdom on how best to prevent a depression, McCain would have proposed a stimulus of some kind, albeit with more emphasis on tax cuts.
Hand-wringing about socialism now under a Democratic president seems as inexplicable to me as fears about fascism were during the last Republican administration. If you study history at the macro and micro level, you see that that is not the case. Officials from the president on down are much more solution oriented than people imagine. The longer they are in office, the more presidents understand how intractable some problems are and the extent to which they have to learn to live with less than ideal outcomes. There may be a little bit of that “the other side had bad motives, we have good” in the first few days in office, although I think you’re more likely to see that type of wishful thinking among those outside government than within. But to the extent it is there, that fades quickly as the complexity of issues becomes clearer.
Posters who have commented on the differences between Bush’s first term and his second are right. (I misread Bush I to mean G. H. W. Bush, then realized from the discussion of rendition and torture memos that it meant the second Bush’s first term.) Because their approaches were more compatible with each other’s than Powell’s and Rumsfeld’s had been, Rice and Gates were able to nudge W. toward somewhat differing tactics than had characterized the administration during the first term. The overall tone of the administration became less Hollywood-reductionist (good guys attacking bad guys with guns blazing, use of physical force resolving all problems) and more nuanced and reflective of what you see in history books (an understanding of the need to use of hard and soft power). One of the best things Bush did was naming Bob Gates as SecDef. One of the best things Obama has done has been to keep him on.
That staunch Republicans such as John Aschcroft, Robert Mueller and James Comey pushed back against some of the Cheney-Addington-Gonzalez interpretations of law played a part in this, as well. As Barton Gellman noted in Angler, Bush began to look at Cheney differently over time and his influence diminished a little bit. Had Bush been as firm an ideologue as his opponents painted him as, that would not have been the case. You see some of the same with Obama, who has lost a lot of support among liberals for not promoting a leftist agenda. Presidents really do govern largely from the middle, even if, as Bush and Obama found out, they lose support as a result. The more you study history, the more apparent that is.

Good points from both the above. On Karths point, I think the example I use is the concept of the kitchen junk drawer. The stuff expands to fill the available space, until you need a second drawer, and so it goes on ad infinitum.
Certainly here in Canada we are of the opinion that the Civil Service actually controls the government, rather than the other way round. I think you have the perfect example south of the 49th with Homeland Security. Another layer of bureaucracy and you still cannot stop a bomber boarding a plane.

Here in the U.S. it’s not a matter of the civil service running the government. There actually are several components to the government: a changing, policy making one composed of political appointees and a permanent one made up of career civil servants. What it comes down to is that the career staff are the mission experts—the people who know the ins and outs of mission implementation in the civil and military departments and agencies. The political appointees derive their power from the U.S. president and are responsible for setting the overall policies and priorities for the departments and agencies. The elements of the two components aren’t rivals, per se, they work in tandem. That is not to say that there aren’t instances where the civil servants don’t clash with the political appointees (the Department of Justice is a good example during the last administration). But as long as the two components respect each other and understand the agencies cultures and the environment in which they work, from what I’ve heard it works pretty well. (Many of my friends are career civil servants.)