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The "Legacy"

By Jack M. Balkin

Good riddance to the worst president in my lifetime and, arguably, the worst president in our entire history. (The only competitor is James Buchanan.) There are so many challenges facing Barack Obama--only Herclues had greater challenges with the Augean stables--but let me suggest that among them is suggested by the following quotation from Niccolo Machiavelli, who, contrary to a common stereotype, was a great theorist of what was necessary to preserve a "republican form of government."

"No well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits; but, having established rewards for good actions & penalties for evil ones, & having rewarded a citizen for good conduct who afterward commits a wrong, it should chastise him for that wrong without regard to his previous merits. A state that observes this principle will long enjoy its liberty; but if it does otherwise, it will speedily come to ruin.

For if a citizen who has rendered some eminent service to the state should all to the reputation & influence which he has thereby acquired the confident audacity of being able to commit any wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a little while become so insolent & overbearing as to put an end to all power of the law."

This is George W. Bush's greatest "legacy": Surrounded by dime-store Machiavellians familiar only with as bastardized version of the Prince, he has exhibited eight hears of contempt for "the law," except inasmuch as it could be used to punish or harass political opponents (or provide "get out of jail" cards for torturuers and other traducers of America's good name). How will we overcome that? Letting bygones be bygones really doesn't seem appropriate. Even if we stipulate, arguendo, that we're "safer" now than 8 years ago, how much more safe might we have been if we had had a different president and vice president not obsessed by ideological fantasies and monumental hubris?

Full post as published by Balkinization on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).