Blue Tribune

Chicago is, to put it mildly, a fairly quirky political town. It has a well-known history of corruption, which hasn't actually faded into history. Chicagoans assume City Hall is corrupt, no matter who (or whose son) is occupying it; they expect regularly scheduled stories about kickbacks and nepotism—and they don’t particularly care, as long as the trains are on time. Corruption is regarded as the price of running the Windy City well, and so there’s a high tolerance and forgiving attitude about the occasional scandal. (The governor’s mansion is a different matter with a different set of expectations altogether.)

Another bit of oddity is that even though Chicago is a resolutely blue town, the Chicago Tribune is a conservative paper. So it’s rather startling to see a column by conservative Steve Chapman (former writer for The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, and National Review, among others, and Alito apologist) bashing the administration:

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

Ouch. And it just gets worse.

What we have now is not a robust executive but a reckless one. At times like this, it's apparent that Cheney and Bush want more power not because they need it to protect the nation, but because they want more power. Another paradox: In their conduct of the war on terror, they expect our trust, but they can't be bothered to earn it.

When the Trib gets this itchy, you know Bush is in trouble.