How Soon Republicans Forget: the biggest domestic power grab since Nixon

This article is hidden behind the Journal's subscriber page but you can read some parts of it via a reprint at Wonkbook.  In it Laura Meckler states that what's unusual about the Obama presidency, as compared to past presidents, is that he has used an expansive executive power to press his domestic agenda.   I disagree totally.

While it's true President Obama has done nothing to limit the executives reach he inherited from George Bush, such as the war on terror and illegal wiretapping.  It's not true that President Obama has expanded such executive authority domestically.  At least not more than any other past president and certainly not more than George W. Bush.

Maybe Meckler has forgotten about the U.S. attorney scandal from just a few short years ago. The Bush administration used a very expansionary view of executive power to fire several U.S. attorneys and to pursue the firing of many more it felt were not upholding the domestic agenda sought by the Bush administration.  Nearly all the fired attorneys were pursuing criminal cases against Republicans or were asked to investigate Democrats to help with GOP election outcomes.

Monica Goodling

Not only did the administration fire them, his administration also used  political affiliation tests to determine their loyalty to the administration.  The loyalty tests were also used in hiring practices to make sure new hires for career prosecutors would be Republicans with shared goals mainly on social issues.  The Justice Department found that Bush appointee, Monica Goodling, had administered such loyalty tests and had discriminated against job applicants who were not Republican.

Goodling didn't limit the loyalty tests to the person being interviewed either.  If an applicant's family member appeared to her as a Democrat (or someone not loyal but especially a Democrat), that person would be rejected outright.  She also discriminated against applicants she thought were homosexual because, obviously, that homosexual person's lifestyle did not fit the domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

Lest we say, the scandal was nothing but using an expanded executive power to press a domestic agenda.  And it's by far a greater domestic power grab of executive power than anything President Obama has done.  Republicans just can't bring themselves to remember the 8 years of failure from George Bush.