Quote:
Originally Posted by Burgerflipp
Not surprising that she abused her power...It's expected that politicians will do that.
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No, you're wrong about that. The idea that executive power is supreme and transcendental is Republican. You can trace this notion of the executive back to the political theories of Carl Schmitt[1], who had something of a revival in academia in the eighties and early nineties, but in the context of contemporary US politics, Nixon is the more immediate source. Nixon's young turks (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush I...) took to it like flies to shit. As for Palin, her theory of the executive changed remarkably once she was nominated. Suddenly she was above subpoenas.
[1] There were others espousing more or less the same theories, e.g., in Japan in the 1930s, but Schmitt is best known.