by Patrick J. Buchanan – August 12, 2002

To see members of Congress smiling behind President Bush, as he signed the “fast track” law by which Capitol Hill surrenders all rights to amend trade treaties, is to understand the new realities of power in this city. We have a Congress that recoils from responsibility.

The great congresses of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, which held this nation together, are history. No longer the first branch of government that the Founding Fathers intended, Congress today ranks in power and influence beneath the president and Supreme Court, and even beneath the U.S. bureaucracy and national press.