Hugo Chavez' scary "enabling law" and Bush's fast-track authority …

Reading the commercial press, one would think Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez became a dictator this week with the passage of an "enabling law" that allows him to issue executive orders over some key areas of public policy.

According to the Times of London, "Fresh from a visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro, his closest ally and mentor" -- you've got to work that in somehow -- "President Hugo Chávez today assumed near dictatorial power in Venezuela." The Miami Herald's headline screamed "Chavez Granted Power to Rule by Decree," the Washington Post made the dubious -- and unsubstantiated -- claim that masses of Venezuelans, "filled with despair at President Hugo Chávez's growing power," are fleeing the country en masse and Investor's Business Daily warned us, simply, that "A Dictatorship Rises."

Pretty much par for the course when it comes to coverage of Venezuela -- -- the international press declared Jihad on Chavez long ago.

But let's look past that perspective and discuss what the law is about, and why the Chicken Littles who are crying 'Dictatorship!' are being typically hypocritical about the whole affair. First, the enabling law is not open-ended and it's not absolute. It will last for 18 months and give Chavez the power to issue decrees in ten specific areas of public policy. Eric Wingerter of the Venezuela Information Office runs it down like this:

Here's what's actually happening: The Venezuelan assembly is [passed] a law that will give the executive branch greater leeway to establish norms on a certain range of issues. Most of these involve guidelines for the president's own cabinet-level agencies. In other words, the Venezuelan version of the IRS will map out the country's tax structure; the Transportation department will devise its own strategic plan for public transit nationwide, etc. This represents a shift of certain powers from the legislative branch to the executive, to be sure, but on paper they don't seem to stray too far from the powers that the executive branch in the United States already has.

Provisions for an enabling law is in the Venezuelan Constitution, and whatever Chavez does has to be Constitutionally kosher.

For the record, I am personally agnostic on the enabling law. As a matter of general principle, I'm deeply skeptical of consolidating power in an executive branch. It brings with it such great opportunities for abuse.

On the other hand, Chavez is trying to restructure Venezuela's economic and political arrangements against the will of a deeply entrenched elite and with an overwhelmingly clear mandate from the Venezuelan people. As they say, elections do matter, and Chavez just won yet another one by his widest margin yet.

So I'll wait to see what he does with this new power before judging.

Now let's talk about hypocrisy -- about the almost surreal double-standard driving the whole 'Chavez, the dictator' narrative. First of all, enabling laws are not unprecedented in Venezuela (or elsewhere), and in the past their enactment never elicited a peep from Washington or the commercial media. In 1974, the Venezuelan legislature gave Carlos Andres Perez the power to issue decrees on a range of economic policies; in 1984, Jaime Lusinchi was given the power to deal with Venezuela's debt crisis by decree and in 1993 President Ramon Jose Velasquez -- an interim president -- was given the power to issue executive orders reforming the Venezuelan financial system. None were accused of usurping power or undermining Venezuelan democracy because they were friendly towards the U.S. and represented Venezuela's elites.

And it's not just a Venezuelan phenomenon. Last February, Tony Blair tried to sucker the British Parliament into granting his administration powers that would have allowed government ministers -- political appointees -- to circumvent the House of Commons. Lib-Dem David Howarth wrote of the measure:

The boring title of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill hides an astonishing proposal. It gives ministers power to alter any law passed by Parliament. The only limitations are that new crimes cannot be created if the penalty is greater than two years in prison and that it cannot increase taxation. But any other law can be changed, no matter how important. All ministers will have to do is propose an order, wait a few weeks and, voilà, the law is changed. […]

Any body created by statute, including local authorities, the courts and even companies, might find themselves reorganised or even abolished. Since the powers of the House of Lords are defined in Acts of Parliament, even they are subject to the Bill. […]

The Bill, bizarrely, even applies to itself, so that ministers could propose orders to remove the limitations about two-year sentences and taxation.[…]

The bill -- ten times more ambitious than Chavez' enabling law -- was, fortunately for those Brits, shot down. But before it was, there was no talk of Blair subverting British democracy or destabilizing the region -- the favorite catch-phrase of the hawkish anti-Chavez set in DC.

Also never mentioned as a threat to democracy is the "fast-track" trade authority that will soon be debated in Congress. What's fast-track? It's an enabling law; it allows the executive branch to negotiate trade agreements that can impact all kinds of public policy -- environmental and labor standards, food safety rules, government procurement policies and on and on, even down to the local level. Once a deal is struck, Congress has to ratify it -- that's in the Constitution, just as Chavez is bound to Venezuela's Constitution -- but they can't debate the provisions or amend the proposal in any way.

The difference between Chavez and Bush, Blair and his predecessors is that Chavez has a popular mandate; Bush will use his trade promotion authority -- if he gets it -- to hammer out treaties based on a wildly unpopular NAFTA model, and he'll do so with the approval of a third of the country just months after his party was creamed in a national election.

(I hope I'm wrong, but if I read the winds correctly, the Dems are going to give it to him; Charlie Rangel said that while it would require "a great deal of trust" in the president, "If we don't give trade promotion authority, we have to have a good reason for not giving it." Charlie, what part of "a consistent pattern of abuse of power" don't you get?)

But at least Chavez, Blair and Bush -- when it comes to trade authority -- sought an enabling law from their respective legislatures. What about Bush's signing statements? What about this deal:

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.

All of which is to say: yes, one should be skeptical of a leader doing a run-around his or her legislature -- following the Reichstag fire, Hitler used an enabling law to seize power in 1933 -- but let's keep things in perspective: "enabling laws" aren't all that unusual and aren't really the issue; what a leader does with them is.

And while we're at it, let's worry a bit more about the fragility of our own democracy before sticking our noses into Venezuela's.