RNC Asserts Executive Privilege

By Scott Horton

My former client, Andrei Sakharov, had a physicist’s approach to politics. The essential dynamics of a political system is rarely apparent on the surface, he said. It was necessary to understand the political equivalent of the subatomic particles and to understand the rules by which they interact. In his last years he was fascinated by constitutional law, and by the Constitution of the Soviet Union.  And after some careful study, he made this pronouncement: the entire system of Communist tyranny hangs on a single article of the Soviet Union, and it is article 6.  “Article 6?!” was the incredulous response. It was an almost forgotten provision – it said that the “Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the guide of the USSR and the interpreter of its laws.”  But Andrei Dmitrievich was convinced: this was the anchor of Communist tyranny.  Remove it, and the system will come tumbling down. And, as Soviet citizens learned within a matter of only a couple of years, this analysis was exact and correct: the movement to repeal article 6 was launched at the end of 1989, and it correctly identified the principal stress point and helped bring down the Communist dictatorship.

But in America today, things seem to be operating in reverse. How are we to understand the announcement that the Republican National Committee will claim Executive Privilege?  The Party is the State. The party is the guide of the United States.  And the interpreter of its laws?  The party stands above the law?  The functions of the Party and the Executive have been fused into one?  The assertion is preposterous. The American constitution has no equivalent of the USSR Constitution’s article 6. And yet today the claim is made, and it hardly seems to stir comment.