There?s one reason above all others that the Republicans need to keep control of both houses of Congress in November. If the Democrats take over, investigations into various aspects of the Bush administration will sprout like weeds in an unattended garden.
The power to subpoena witnesses, denied the Democrats under GOP rule on Capitol Hill, will pass to the Democrats if they become the majority. And House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has served notice that her party will use that power with a vengeance.
But the Republicans already have to worry about a maverick of their own, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is threatening to invoke the same subpoena power now in a way that could spell deep political trouble for President Bush.
While other Republicans like Sens. Christopher Bond of Missouri and Jeff Sessions of Alabama are wailing that any inquiry into the latest disclosures of domestic spying will imperil national security, Specter says he may hold committee hearings to get to the bottom of it all.
The Pennsylvania Republican, reacting to the report in USA Today that the National Security Agency has been getting data in the millions from major U.S. telephone companies on domestic calls, says he is “prepared to consider subpoenas” of company officials to find out what it?s about.
The disclosure of such sweeping telephonic spying, on the heels of the earlier revelation that NSA was tapping into international calls to and from the United States without court order required by law, intensifies the pressure on the president to let Congress in on the scope of what he calls his “terrorist surveillance program.”
In that earlier report of NSA domestic spying, Bush after first declining to comment relied on a finding by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the power to do so was inherent in time of war in the Constitution?s designationof the president as commander in chief.
Specter said on learning of the latest development that he might also call Gonzales back to testify, “if it would do any good.” It was a comment clearly indicating his contempt for the attorney general?s earlier lack of cooperation with the committee on domestic spying procedures.
But the president has allies in his resistance to tell Congress more about what?s going on in this business. Majority Leader Bill Frist suggested to reporters that he would decide whether hearings were needed, though it is normally Specter?s prerogative to call them in the committee he chairs. And Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says there?s already sufficient oversight.
In threatening to subpoena the telephone executives cooperating with the administration?s greatly expanding surveillance, Specter has strong support from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. One of them, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, has suggested her belief that “we are on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of unreasonable search and seizure.”
The administration, under siege by Democrats on a range of other issues from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq to politically troublesome high gas prices, appears willing to take a stand on the domestic spying issue.
It is one way the president can still attempt to tap into public patriotism and concern over safety at home ? a gamble that Americans remain more worried about further terrorist attacks here than about possible intrusions on their civil liberties. In fact, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll says 63 percent of Americans find Bush?s approach acceptable, and 65 percent say they do so even if it intrudes on their privacy.
What is surprising in all this is that many Democrats have been saying that if only the president would inform more than the mere handfulof legislators now in the know, and ask for revisions in the law covering electronic surveillance, he would almost certainly get them.
But up to now at least, he has clung to the idea that he already has all the power he needs. It?s an invitation to more congressional opposition and rancor when he least needs it.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
