Word: nixonization
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Executive privilege: George Washington invoked it, Dwight Eisenhower named it and Richard Nixon abused it. Now it looms as the nuclear option in George W. Bush's battle with Congress over its investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. So what the heck does it mean, and how much weight will it carry in the current standoff...
...right to withhold certain information from Congress, the courts and most anyone else, even in the face of a subpoena. It's a conditional privilege, meaning it can be overridden in some circumstances, such as when the President is the target of a criminal investigation. That's why President Nixon famously lost his 1974 struggle in the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the Watergate tapes private. But the courts are typically deferential to the privilege, presuming that it holds unless someone can prove an overwhelming interest in obtaining the information...
...Mistakes were made," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted when pressed about the purge of eight U.S. Attorneys viewed as unfriendly to the Administration. "Mistakes were made," President Bush agreed the next day. It's a bad sign when officials are left quoting Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler, whose handling of Watergate set the standard for nonconfessions as well as nondenials. Flamboyant apology has never been in the Bush script. This is an Administration known for firing people for independence, not incompetence. But campaign season has arrived, subpoena power has changed hands, and suddenly everyone is in a purgative mood...
...friend John F. Kennedy; in New York City. A bow-tied intellectual and dedicated Washington partygoer, he drew fire from critics who said he perpetuated the image of Camelot while gliding over Kennedy's political and personal missteps. Still, his more than 20 books, on subjects from F.D.R. to Nixon, influenced political debate for decades and won him two Pulitzer Prizes: the first, at age 28, for his fresh take on Andrew Jackson and the second for his most famous work, the intimate chronicle of the Kennedy White House, A Thousand Days...
...Then there is the argument that Bush should boot his Vice President before he strikes again. It's an often forgotten fact that three of the past six Presidents either dumped or tried to dump their Vice Presidents: Richard Nixon tossed Spiro Agnew for Gerald Ford in 1973, Ford tossed Nelson Rockefeller and tapped Bob Dole as a running mate in the 1976 campaign, and Bush's father George Herbert Walker Bush let his top aides try to give the heave-ho to Vice President Dan Quayle when he was dragging down the G.O.P. ticket by three or four points...