Prior to the ‘04 election, I predicted two paths President Bush might take if he won reelection:

1. No longer having to face another election to office, he would abandon the base that put him in office and finally pursue a “compassionate conservative,” or, as I was hoping, a moderate path; or
2. He’d get far worse because he no longer had to care about getting reelected and, thus, could just wreak as much havoc as possible.

It didn’t really matter, of course. The disasters of his first four years will take long enough to repair anyway.

Now, Ezra Klein at The American Prospect writes that President Bush has found, in an unlikely place, the liberation to do whatever he wants: by having dismal poll ratings and dividing the parties and the country.

“President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man,” wrote The New York Times. “A leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants.”

If the Buddha and Machiavelli had a child, this would be the type of liberation he’d speak about: Liberation from the suffering imposed by democratic checks and balances. It is a liberation George W. Bush has pursued with a single-minded vigor. From the beginning, he has consciously sought to govern from division, realizing early on that popularity can actually constrain an administration, and consensus is just another word for compromise.

And now, in the latter half of his second term, at 20-some percent in the polls, he has achieved full liberation from shackles of public opinion and congressional approval. In his solitude, he is virtually invincible.

. . .

To understand how, it’s necessary to appreciate George Bush’s almost unique circumstances. There are generally a couple democratic checks on a president’s power: his desire to retain political capital with Congress in order to pass legislation; his need to retain popularity in order more effectively advocate for his agenda; and his wish to improve the fortunes of his party and ensure the ascension of his vice-president.

Bush is constrained by none of those. He has largely given up on passing legislation through Congress, preferring instead to focus on those portions of his agenda that require relatively little in the way of congressional involvement — notably the continuation of the Iraq War, where Democrats would effectively need a veto-proof majority to stop him.

When he does go through Congress, he’s been attaching “signing statements” to direct courts to interpret the legislation in a way contrary to the text and favorable to the president. This has so enraged some senators that Republican Arlen Spector is now sponsoring legislation to stop it.

Bush has embraced this descent into unpopularity, eschewing even a hint of compliance with public preferences for withdrawal, or even drawdown, in Iraq. His vice-president isn’t running to succeed him, and as the immigration debacle proved, he’s grown uninterested in the future of the Republican Party.

All of which means he is completely free. Save for impeachment, he is utterly liberated from the natural democratic checks on executive behavior. There is nothing that congressional Democrats or the electorate can take from him that he has not already taken from himself. And, perversely, that gives him extraordinary freedom of movement. Not on all issues — he will never fix Medicare or solve the immigration crisis. But on Iraq, he is virtually untouchable. And in the arrogation of power to the executive — a longtime Bush and Cheney obsession, which ranges from secret wiretapping without FISA approval to the commutation of Libby’s sentence — there is nothing standing before their consolidation of authority.

I know I’ve posted a lot of the piece, but it’s just so damn good.

Here’s your zinger for the day from the column:

Truly, [President Bush] has achieved a Machiavellian enlightenment, a state of perfect zen-like detachment from democracy.

Honestly, I would have preferred if he’d simply been raptured up to heaven.