The Bush Administration has promoted a highly controversial constitutional vision of the Presidency. It seeks to push the envelope of presidential power while preventing oversight by the Judicial and Legislative branches of government. This vision of the Presidency is organized around the notion that the Commander-in-Chief can do pretty much whatever he likes in time of emergency, and what constitutes an emergency is determined by the Commander-in-Chief. It is the constitutional equivalent of Bush's repeated declaration that he is a War President and his is a War Presidency, that 9-11 "changed everything" and that the President must be free to do whatever he can to protect the Homeland.

In the past three years, the Bush Administration has reinterpreted the Presidency, and hence the constitutional system of checks and balances, in the image of an all-powerful Commander-in-Chief. In its most extreme form, it produces the logic of the OLC torture memo, which asserts that Congress may not interfere in any way with the President-as-Commander-in-Chief, and that all laws and international obligations that might interfere with his decisions as Commander-in-Chief must be construed not to apply to him. This view of Presidential Caesarism (for that is what it is), is accompanied by an obsessive concern for secrecy and avoiding all forms of transparency and accountability. Although this Administration's disdain for accountability and transparency has been defended most recently in terms of the Commander-in-Chief Power, this trait emerged long before September 11th; it was at the heart of Vice President Cheney's refusal to reveal the members of his Energy Task Force, and President Bush's decision to withhold access to presidential papers.