Edwards has said that he intends to use every available power of the Presidency to accomplish his goals. The way I read him, if he says he won’t do it, that means he doesn’t think it’s legal. I could be wrong, but I’ve seen him up close and that’s my read.

The Coffin announcements are in these… links; the last is interesting for its juxtaposition of photographs of Lucy Dalglish and Shannen Coffin from 2003.

I think ew is misreading Edwards’ answers to these questions. The populist rhetorical approach has always been to prefer the specific, the personal, and the immediate over the general, the technical, and the complete.

If you look at Edwards’ answers to the all the questions, you can see a consistent tactic. He re-frames an “insider baseball” question with an answer that’s meaningful in the terms of our current situation. I think this is exactly the right technique. People want to know what the next President is going to do, not whether he passed Con Law.

More in-depth, the toughest issues any President succeeding the current occupants of the Oval Office will confront are: “how to clean out the cancerous mess Bush/Cheney both created and left?” and “how to vitiate the precedents created by their power grabs so it cannot happen again?”

While as to the first it is easy to say “prosecute the unpardoned and force the pardoned to testify”, it may well take the aggressive use of the executive powers to dig out the mess from all the corners where it has been buried. Edwards (for one; the same applies to Obama and Clinton) has probably been informed by the history surrounding Carter’s promise to “never lie to the American people” which he made to limn the contrast between his putative administration and the then-existing Republican administration. That, anyone from that era can recall, was used to come back and bite him for predictions which did not come true. The RWNM of the 70s, such as it existed, transmuted inaccuracy or necessary-to-preserve-secrets obfuscations into lies, and then into broken campaign promises.

Thus, while it is doubltess appealing (and correct) to say “No.” as Dodd did, such a definitive answer may put the answerer in the position where he/she does not want to be in future. Biden’s answer, BTW, is both correct and intelligent.

As to the vitiating the power grab precedent, by way of example, it would be relatively easy to close Gitmo and send the captives on their way, whereever. The problem with that is that doing so does not destroy the assumed-legitimacy of having a Gitmo in the first place. As it stands now, Gitmo has a legitimacy because it has been (a) funded, (b) continued, (c) built, to a degree, into legislation, (d) allowed to a degree by judicial precedent. That infrastructure of precedent legitimating (the example of) Gitmo is what needs to be destroyed.

Likely that work will have to be done brick by brick and decision by decision, much as the structure was built in the first place. Otherwise, that work has to be done along the German WWII example, which entails massive destruction of society and infrastructure. Though it might be satisfying to apply the Bushco precedents and principles to Republicans, the more vigorously the better, the keening and outcry from their friends in the media would likely result in the impeachment Pelosi has managed to avoid for Bushco so far.

So, answers to simple questions about executive privilege – while very useful – neither adequately address nor present visions of the solutions to the central problems – undoing the damage and destroying the precedents which made that damage-doing possible.

Is Edwards describing Executive Privilege, in its current state of judicial review, as a privilege that can legally be used for partisan gain while pledging that he would not do so? … I will not invoke executive privilege merely to advance partisan ends. Of course, his pledge is a black and white rule in a world of grey and therefore, ambiguous.

Hopefully, Charlie Savage or others plan to do some follow-up to tease out some clarity.

Great stuff EW, graci.

executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the President and the White House.

Isn’t this statement extremely broad? It seems to cover Bush and all his antics, especially when taken with the previous “reasonable people have debated it”. Biden’s answer seemed the most instructional, as if he were a professor teaching a class. Edward’s answer “as guided by judicial review” was in his first sentence. His second sentence was a dig at Bush.

Though I will say, all of his answers seem rather off-topic. IMO he used this as another opportunity to hit his talking points, rather than answer the questions, so all his answers come off as being more favorable to executive power than I think he really believes. I like Hillary’s answer here least, but she answered the question head on, which I appreciate at least.