It’s an Administration, no it’s a Presidency, no it’s the Bush Regime!

We have referred to Presidential Administrations in a number of ways over time. Early on the term commonly used was administration. Later the more majestic term presidency evolved from meaning the office of the President to also mean the entire executive branch under him or even his term. Under Bush we have seen the rise of a new terminology. This is the Bush regime.

This is really a new way of describing an administration. Sure, it’s been used before, but it’s never been so common as it is today. I also have a feeling we won’t hear it commonly used to describe many future administrations. There is something unique about George W Bush, something so unique that the language we use to talk about him has evolved.

To understand why this is important it’s important to understand what a regime is. There are a couple common ways the term is used. There is the traditional political science meaning and a more modern meaning filled with innuendo. Though the later is probably the way it is meant, I think there is something to be said for examining that terminology with reference to Bush in the way political philosophy would use it.

The modern sense of regime we’re all relatively familiar with. It’s generally been used as a pejorative term for dictatorships or banana republics. Bush himself used the term in that sense when he chose to call for “regime change” in Iraq, though Clinton had a lot to do with the popularization of that terminology.

This is the sense that the term is used in reference to Bush. In fact, it’s used so often that a google search for regime will returns this description of the Bush regime as it’s fourth result. As you may notice, there is a significant partisan bent to this usage, but perhaps there is something real to it. Just as Nixon emulated the garb of those dictatorships in his proposed dress uniforms for the White House police, Bush does trend towards those same tendencies.

When you look at the administrations love affair with the idea of the imperial presidency though, perhaps it makes more sense to look at the Bush regime in the more traditional political philosophy sense.

In politics, a regime is the form of government: the set of rules, both formal (for example, a constitution) and informal (common law, cultural or social norms, etc.) that regulate the operation of government and its interactions with society. For instance, the United States has one of the oldest regimes still active in the world, dating to the ratification of its Constitution in 1789.

A case can be made, and I’m going to attempt to make it, that the Bush regime is a particularly apt description for this administration precisely because they are seeking to so drastically change the rules, both by proposing alterations or finding exceptions to the Constitution and also by drastically altering cultural and social norms. This new regime is a break from the traditional American regime. It is a rejection of the American axiom on which our nation was founded and on which our political positions should be based.

This administrations position on torture, in particular, stands in stark contrast to the moral values which have guided this country. Its repeated attempts to pass a constitutional amendment to specifically ban homosexual marriage have also worked against the value of equality under the law. Its declaration that the president has almost boundless powers to act in the role of commander and chief also clash with the boundaries outlined in the Constitution.

The term regime, however, is not universally used. Therefore it could be theorized that not all of America recognizes the unprecedented nature of this administration. Likewise, it is not entirely new to term an American Presidential administration, a regime. A simple Google search for “Clinton regime” for instance comes up with 17,300 results. A similar search for “Reagan regime” returns 6,400 results and “Roosevelt regime” returns 2,780. A search for “Bush regime” returns 460,000 results, far too many to discount simply as a swell due to the rise of the internet.

These links come from all sorts of sites. Many, perhaps most, of the links are to sites with a decidedly left wing bent. This is not surprising given the connotations noted earlier. There is a value for the left in branding this administration with a name which reminds people of the dictatorial tendencies that run throughout Bush’s policies. Still, the term is not the sole domain of far left wonks.

In the main stream media the term can most often be found used in quotes and on the Op-Ed pages, often from the more left wing contributors. The more right leaning papers seldom if ever use the term.

Fox news, the Washington Times and the NY Post, for example, are fairly unlikely to be found using the term except in a quote, if at all. The New York Times, LA Times and the Guardian all use the term occasionally in quotes or in their Op-Ed pages. The contributers doing so are generally left leaning.

On a rare occasion an editor lets the term slip by in a news story, though rarely in a political article. One example of this would be this NY Times piece on a baseball game between Cuba and American players. These exceptions are rare however as the terms inflammatory nature certainly is clear to most news editors.

Across the blogosphere of course the term is also widely used. With the lack of editors and the more overt partisanship of many blogs, this is hardly surprising. Still, perhaps those using the term are onto something. Like a Freudian slip, when using the term simply to deride Bush, they may be speaking to something very true. What Bush has worked towards is a completely new vision for America. Where we have lived in an American regime up till recently, we now truly live under a Bush regime.

This is not the first time a President has proposed a radically new direction for the nation, and it is typical for radical departures from the American regime to be swiftly corrected. The Alien and Sedition Acts that Adams passed stand as the most comparable example to what Bush has worked towards with his attempts to skirt the legal system in cases related to terrorism. Likewise, attempts to put wiretapping and other forms of spying on citizens outside the purview of the courts stand in stark contrast to understanding of the Constitution that has bonded us for hundreds of years.

The clearest example of all have been Bush’s constant attempts to expand the practice of the theory of the unitary executive. This theory essentially holds that no one, not congress or the courts can create a body that in any way limits the powers of the executive.

The question is, do these and the myriad of other examples create a case that what Bush has created is a new regime. I would argue it certainly does. Not only that, but I’d argue it stands in stark contrast to the American regime that has bonded us since this nations inception. This disturbing shift has, perhaps unwittingly, been recognized in the language we use to describe this administration.