Air Force One Thought Experiment, or Life in a Pissant Empire with President Sméagol

Consider this scenario: Our President (can be Bush or Obama, this is not a partisan political drill) is making an overseas trip, departing from some nation to CONUS. At the country of departure, a Chinese human rights activist, who the Chinese want back, is trying to get beyond the reach of the Chinese government.

The Chinese have been spreading a lot of money around the world, as you might have seen. Somebody tells them that the human rights dude is on Air Force One. Air Force One has to cross the airspace of several other nations to bring the President home. The Chinese persuade their friends to close their airspace to Air Force One "for technical reasons". Air Force One has to land in another nation to refuel and it then sits on the ground for a day. It can't leave until the President permits some local cop to walk through the airplane and verify that the Chinese dude isn't on board. Then, as if by some magic, all of the "technical reasons" are cleared up and Air Force One then flies home.

Can you imagine the level of outrage that would be going on right now?

In case you've not been paying attention recently, that's just what the United States did to the president of Bolivia. Our European lackeys allies closed their airspace to the Bolivian presidential aircraft because some moron in our own government thought that Snowden was on the Bolivian airplane and then all sort of apeshittiness happened.

That the argument can be made that the aircraft of a head of state is a diplomatic aircraft and is immune from search apparently made no impression on our government. We're, for now, the sole superpower on the planet and we acted no better than a bully extorting lunch money

A few days ago, RobertaX posed the question of whether or not this country has made the transition from being a republic to being an empire and if so, when that happened.

I imagine several possible dates. First might be 1968, when it became the law that the cops can throw your ass up against a wall and search you based on little more than a hunch. That was when the exemptions to the Fourth Amendment began to consume the rule. It might be 1971, when Nixon declared a "war on drugs" that began a near continual erosion of civil rights when it came to interactions with law enforcement. It might be 2001, when the sarcastically named "USA Patriot Act" permitted the government to do all sorts of things that once required a warrant. It might be 2007, when the NSA's monitoring of the communications of all Americans was legalized. Maybe it was 2002, when the government detained an American citizen on American soil and held him for over three years, without charges, in conditions that were tantamount to torture. Maybe it was 2001 and 2013, when two different presidents claimed the right to do whatever they wanted to anyone in the world for whatever reason suited them- the first to hold anyone indefinitely without charges, the second to kill anyone who displeased him.

Or maybe it's now, when our government, in essence, forced down the presidential aircraft of another nation and had it searched.

One of the problems is that, no matter who becomes president, they fall in love with the power they have attained. Even if they previously spoke out against the overarching power of the office, once they sit behind the Resolute desk, they jealously guard the power of the office as though they had been infected with the same sort of power-mad virus that long ago consumed the soul of Dick Cheney. President Obama seems to think that he can be trusted with the power to slaughter anyone anywhere at any time, but he's not so sure about the next president, so he's all in favor of limits on successor presidents' powers.

The problem there is several fold. First off, any limitations imposed unilaterally by a president can just as easily be undone by a successor. So for any limitations on presidential power to be effective, they must be written into law. That won't happen because this Congress is unable to pass a bill of any consequence. It also won't happen because both the House and Senate are loaded with politicians who have no trouble imagining themselves as president some day. It won't happen because, as we can easily see most prominently in Senators Feinstein and Graham, there are legislators who think it is just peachy that the middle three amendments in the Bill of Rights are completely defanged.

But even if such a law or laws were enacted, the only enforcement mechanism is by impeachment. And good luck with that. Richard Nixon's crimes were beyond dispute, but most of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted against impeachment in 1974. The Clinton impeachment was even more partisan.* For that matter, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868 was, as historians now pretty much agree, done for political expediency rather than because of any misconduct by Johnson.**

Sure, somebody could sue and try to get an injunction. Good luck with that, for the Supremes would probably not let it proceed because of standing. And even if they found that a president had exceeded his (or her) authority, what can they do about it? They have no hard power, even less than the Pope. And that doesn't even begin to touch the point that the Supremes have, over the last dozen-plus years, shown that they are as much a pack of partisan political actors as the Congress itself.

I see this country slouching into becoming an empire, not from any designs on being an empire (the neocons notwithstanding), but more out of bureaucratic and political inertia. The politicians who see this happening and have tried to do something have either been sidelined (Russ Feingold) or are utter cranks who nobody pays attention to (Ron Paul). Nothing really stands in the way of our political system finally lumbering into becoming a republic in name only.

To answer Roberta's question, as to whether or not we've crossed the line from republic to empire, I don't know the answer. The dividing line may be as nebulous as that between the heliosphere and interstellar space, determinable only after it has been definitely crossed.

But most Americans don't seem to give a shit about it. And that is the real tragedy of it all.
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* Here's a fun fact: Trent Lott was on the House Judiciary committee and he voted against impeaching Nixon. As a Senator, he voted for a conviction of Clinton. Doesn't get much more partisan than that, folks.
** For a demonstration of the partisan use of impeachment, you need only look at either the current caterwauling for impeachment by the far right loons, or the impeachment of Governor Sulzer of New York a century ago.