John Howard espoused his philosophy of conservative governance in his Australia Day speech in 2006. It included:

The permanent challenge for Australia is to avoid the extremes of big, overbearing government on the one hand and laissez-faire indifference on the other.

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

In this he is constrained as Australians are used to many of the social institutions such as medicare - which is really only a modern institution - and Howard was a majoritarian and nationalist populist. There are always inconsistencies in these views as well, Howard increased the pace of national legislation, regulation and centralization, while weakening many other wider safety nets through sectarian subsidy (private health for instance).

It is also popular to bash the laissez-faire nature of America, but it is that laissez-faire with which Australian economic rationalism was based upon, not to mention American capitalism saw off central planning and communism as an alternative means of social organization.

The main failure of modern American government was governance itself. The lack of adherence to existing regulations meant that financial institutions were able to act criminally and fraudulently; leading to a massive taxpayer bailout of the financial system under-pinning the American and global economy.

Australia did not have that issue, and certainly not to the same extent as the US did. In this Australian conservatism was superior to American conservatism.

With the Bush Administration coming to a close what are we to make of foreign policy during that period? It is commonly supposed that a cabal of neo-conservatives hijacked the normal state policy apparatus and enforced radical policies on America. Certainly PNAC and neo-conservatism were discovered after the rush to invade Iraq was pushed through the mass media. But both those groups based their policy around American global hegemony and the maintenance of the hegemon. That is not really that radical, it is how super-powers have acted since the beginning of time.

White House from photogeneric's photostream.

Probably the best idea we have of neo-conservative foreign policy is from an article by Irving Kristol. Where he almost bmusedly discusses the neo-conservative approach to foreign policy. Again, it is not really that radical. It is based upon national patriotism, distaste for world government (UN etc), the friend-enemy distinction in international relations and finally that American interests are global, not national;

Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode.

A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns.

This can be construed as an idealogical justification for the defence of democratic Israel from the monarchies, oligarchies and dictatorships of the Middle East. In conjunction with the friend-enemy distinction it can possibly be seen to aim at Saddam Hussein as well.

But what of American interests being global? Neo-conservatism, like conservatives from the 19thC see the collapse of the nation that ensures the freedom of the seas - formerly Britain, now America - as an essential role in the global order .

Consequently the maintenance of American hegemony becomes an altruistic and necessary policy. Currently the US maintains it position at the top of the international pile through its industry and culture which are massive consumers of finite energy resources. In addition, a one party state in China is now challenging the US for these resources.

The Carter Doctrine has been around since the 1970s and states that the US will go to war to ensure the security of its energy supplies. This is not a new thing and it is possible many decades of US policy makers have become used to the idea of some kind of US military intervention in the Middle East would happen.

After the attacks on New York on September 11th a US national security document included the doctrine of pre-emption, which can be called the Bush Doctrine. This enabled the US to strike another country based on the assumption of terror threats:

We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by: ... defending the United States, the American people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders.While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country;

By 2002 there were the doctrines in place to strike into the heart of the Middle East with US military power. The political sell of it was a different matter. The Bush Administration went quickly from freedom and democracy, to nuclear weapons, to mushroom clouds, and so forth. In the end they settled on the Schmittian policy of vilifying their political opponents.

So how radical was the Bush foreign policy? The main incident the Bush Administration will be remembered for will be the invasion of Iraq. Here the cassus belli was tenuous at best and an outright fabrication at worst. The complete schmozzle of policies after the invasion immediately discredited what good will remained for America.

Where did the policy for the invasion of Iraq come from? The Bush Doctrine allows for the pre-emptive strike against nations based on terror threats, but Iraq did not satisfy this. Neo-conservative foriegn policy allows for the friend-enemy distinction which Hussein obviously fell on the wrong side of. But not enough to invade a country and place American military power at risk.

Bush often talks in speeches of freedom and democracy and how America is bringing it to Iraq. There was also the hope that it could shake up the region and democracy could flower across the Middle East. The opposite has happened with Iran becoming more powerful for having an American neighbour in Iraq. The freedom and democracy reason is weak as it was one of the constantly shifting political sells during the run up to the war. I don't doubt Bush and others hope for it, but it is not enough to justify an invasion policy and its consequent cost.

The only other alternative was that it was strategic in an attempt to secure American energy supply with the establishment of a geographical stake in the Middle East along with a political, economic and militaristic one. In this area the Bush Administration was not radical as it followed on from a doctrine that dated back to the 1970s. It can also be construed that this process was to ensure American pre-eminence economically and in global affairs.

One of the more contentious aspects of George W. Bush's term as President has been the use of Executive Orders to determine the constitutional action by the executive in response to legislation. Executive Orders do not have the force of law, they only have the force of procedure within the Administration, but as the executive executes the laws formalised by Congress in legislation, they can have serious effect in how the laws are enforced.

Because the President is using Executive Orders to outline the constitutional boundaries between executive and legislative there is concern that the Executive Orders are being used to legislate from the executive pulpit. It is probably more meaningful to see these actions under Jefferson's doctrine of higher obligation which effectively nullifies the doctrine of judicial review. (more)

The US Constitution was written in the days when it took James Madison three days to travel to his nearby political friend, Thomas Jefferson's house. That same trip can be made today in twenty minutes by car. Foreign policy with Europe in those days could be a problem as well, as it took several months for Executive policy to reach Ambassadors in England and France - often events in the US would outpace communications. So it was wise at the time to include a provision for recess appointments as getting the Senate together could take weeks, if not months. Today? With modern transport? Not so much. (more)

The Office of the Vice President has argued that it is exempt from complying with an executive order as it is not an "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information". The letter from the National Archives to the Attorney General writes that the Office of the Vice President believes this is true because it has both legislative and executive functions. (more)

A quote: "In a mixed constitution where the bounds of the respective powers are not precisely and effectively fixed, their actual relations at any time will be determined by the accident of personalities and the advantage which the need of surmounting emergencies, or the prestige of emergencies already surmounted, may give to one institution or another" (more)

The US Senate is poised to hold a vote of no-confidence in the US Attorney-General today. No confidence votes have a different meaning in a Presidential system to a Parliamentary one, in the latter it can bring down a government, ironically, because of poor separation of powers; it cannot in a Presidential system. (more)