Did you read the article? He describes the original impulse as a function of the Cold War, i.e., a byproduct of the national security state and the supposed need for a strong president as an agent of foreign policy. Which is to say that it started before the Nixon administration (typically, the Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964 is seen as the beginning of the modern conservative era in the US). But the downfall of Nixon not only riled the already existing conservative movement in general, it was also a lesson to folks like Cheney (who worked in Nixon's administration) on what mistakes to avoid and on the need to grab even *more* power in the executive so that the bastards couldn't drag you down. They learned even more about that during Iran-Contra, which is another reason why so much of the truly ugly policy and action is coming out of the Vice President's office. They felt there was less oversight of the VP, thus a great place to run secret intelligence operations and generally to set up a parallel executive beyond the control of ... anyone.
Blaming it all on an anonymous "wealthy minority" is a bit lacking in historical detail, by the way.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-07-07 03:59 pm (UTC)Blaming it all on an anonymous "wealthy minority" is a bit lacking in historical detail, by the way.