Commentary by Ann Woolner

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) — When Todd Palin said thanks but no thanks to a legislative subpoena last week, his defiance had a familiar ring.

Oh, right. That’s precisely what the Bush administration does when Congress sends a subpoena to the White House.

In Juneau, Palin refused to show up to testify before a state Senate Judiciary Committee investigating alleged abuse of executive power by his wife, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, now the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Likewise in Washington, the White House is defying subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary Committee investigating possible abuse of executive power by the president’s people.

Perhaps you were hoping that come January, Washington would usher in an administration that understands it is just one of three government branches, each with a duty to act as a check on the other two. This one clearly doesn’t.

In Washington, the congressional committee wants to know whether U.S. attorneys were fired for refusing to carry out a partisan agenda.

In Juneau, the committee wants to know whether Governor Palin fired the state’s public safety commissioner for failing to carry out a personal agenda.

She and her husband are accused of leaning on the commissioner, in vain, to sack a state trooper who was embroiled in a nasty divorce with her sister.

Even the denials sound alike.

No, she didn’t oust the commissioner because he wouldn’t fire the trooper. She fired him because he “wasn’t meeting the goals I wanted met,” Palin told ABC Anchor Charles Gibson.

Partisan Behavior

No, the U.S. attorneys weren’t fired for prosecuting Republicans or failing to prosecute Democrats, Bush and then- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insisted. They were fired for not carrying through on the Justice Department’s priorities, Gonzalez told Congress.

That was just one of several conflicting answers Gonzales gave, which is one of the reasons he is no longer heading the Justice Department.

The two cases also have this in common: The executives’ strategies are so legally specious that they look like nothing more than stalling tactics.

The McCain-Palin campaign no doubt wants to avoid any embarrassing findings before the Nov. 4 election. The Bush White House is trying to run out the clock on the current Congress, which ends in January, hoping the next Congress shows less interest in those fired U.S. attorneys.

Reasons for Defiance

That’s not the reasons they give for their defiance, of course. In both cases, those under investigation say the probes are mere political circuses. Besides, the lawmakers have limited authority to investigate such executive decisions, the executives assert.

Those arguments, and more, were crushed by a federal judge in July who ruled in the federal case. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, appointed to the bench by the current president, said former White House counsel Harriet Miers had to at least show up when handed a subpoena from the House committee.

The administration “defies both reason and precedent” by claiming the president’s decision to fire prosecutors is none of the committee’s business, Bates ruled.

Also unprecedented, the judge said, is “the notion that Ms. Miers is absolutely immune from compelled congressional process.”

The judge repeated that for emphasis.

Authority to Rule

He also rejected Bush’s claim that the courts have no authority to even rule on the question.

“The executive cannot be the judge of its own privilege,” Bates said.

The House Committee, which in the meantime had also subpoenaed Bush political adviser Karl Rove, took Bates’s 93-page ruling and scheduled Miers to testify on Sept. 11.

But the administration, unable to win a delay from Bates, took the decision to a federal appeals court, forestalling Miers’s appearance.

In Alaska, as in Washington, it is illegal to ignore a legislative subpoena. Todd Palin could be jailed for six months or fined up to $500, according to the Associated Press.

But with the legislature out of session until January, nothing will happen, at least not until then.

It wasn’t long ago that Governor Palin pledged cooperation with the Senate committee.

“Hold me accountable,” the governor said in mid-August as the lawmakers’ investigation got under way.

But that was before she joined John McCain’s ticket.

Now the two candidates who insist they would bring change to Washington, who plan to shake it up and make it do right, these self-described mavericks who are working overtime to shed any connection to the Bush administration, have adopted one of the most dangerous principles that Bush has promoted.

They seem to think they are above questioning, indeed, above the law. Sound familiar?

So much for change.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 23, 2008 00:04 EDT