Whom do we elect? Constitutionalist Americans who want to fix the nation's ills through the presidency are fighting on the wrong battlefront. The proper place is in our own congressional districts.

On June 14, George W. Bush recalled the accomplishments of a former president of the United States. "As chief executive, he showed a deep and far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great compassion for people in need, and the forward-looking spirit the Americans like in a President," President Bush told a group of dignitaries assembled in the East Room of the White House to honor this man. "[He] could always see a better day ahead--and Americans knew he was working hard to bring that day closer. Over eight years, it was clear that [he] loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy. He's a man of enthusiasm and warmth, who could make a compelling case and effectively advance the causes that drew him to public service."

Mr. Bush made these remarks not long after the passing of Ronald Reagan. However, the president he was recalling was not Ronald Reagan but Bill Clinton, and the event was the unveiling of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton's White House portraits. Of course, in light of this occasion, it could be argued that Mr. Bush's niceties were intended more out of a sense of politeness than any deep-seated belief that Mr. Clinton, who was present, had performed well as president.

Nevertheless, the record shows that, like all modern-day presidencies regardless of party affiliation, the policy differences between Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton are more a matter of style than substance. The record also shows that all modern-day presidents have been beholden to the same power elite--most visibly represented by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), whose members have dominated every administration since at least the time of FDR.

Every four years, Americans go to the ballot box to determine who the next president will be. And every four years, the only candidates who have a realistic chance of winning fit the Establishment mold. Neither President George W. Bush (whose administration is larded with CFR members) nor Senator John Kerry (CFR) is an exception to this general rule. Interestingly, both Kerry and Bush belong to Skull & Bones, a secret society numbering probably fewer than 800 living members. Yet neither candidate is willing to talk about it.

No third-party "outsider" bucking the power elite has any chance of capturing the White House. If a genuine outsider appeared to be making too much headway, the Establishment media would wreck his prospects through smear. Even if an outsider solidly supportive of the U.S. Constitution could be elected, there is little he could accomplish without a like-minded Congress. But there is much a constitutionalist Congress could accomplish, even with a bad president--and therein lies the key to victory.

Bush's Record

If President Bush is re-elected, he can be expected to do what he has done during his first term in office--continue the basic policies of his Democratic predecessor. In fact, Mr. Bush admitted as much regarding an important issue supported by the environmental lobby when he boasted: "And now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration. This is the way environmental policy should work." Mr. Bush made this statement in April 2001, when he announced his support for the United Nations' Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) treaty. Negotiations were begun by the previous [Clinton] administration," Mr. Bush recalled, "and this treaty achieves a goal shared by this administration." The POP treaty restricts the use of the so-called "Dirty Dozen" chemicals. One of those chemicals, DDT, was responsible for virtually eliminating malaria.

It is of course true that on the subject of environmentalism, Bush and Clinton are generally perceived as being on opposite sides. This misconception is based largely on the Clinton administration's support for the Kyoto (global warming) treaty and Mr. Bush's opposition to it. However, Mr. Bush's opposition is not based on any disagreement with the Kyoto objective of restricting C[O.sub.2] and other greenhouse gas emissions. As Mr. Bush explained in his June 11, 2001 climate-change address: "Our country, the United States, is the world's largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases.... We recognize the responsibility to reduce our emissions." He added: "America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change."

Other policy areas where the Bush administration is continuing "the work of a Democratic administration" include:

* Education: In January 2002, Mr. Bush signed into law the "No Child Left Behind Act," which radically increased the federal role in education. In his most recent budget proposal, the fiscal 2005 budget, Mr. Bush proposed spending $64.3 billion for the Department of Education, as compared to $35.7 billion in 2001, the year he assumed office--an 80.1 percent increase.

* Foreign Aid: In March 2002, Mr. Bush called for a 50 percent increase in "core development assistance" over three years. In his fiscal 2005 budget, he proposed $16.6 spending for "international assistance programs," as compared to $11.8 billion in 2001.

* Agriculture: In May 2002, Mr. Bush signed into law a gargantuan farm bill he supported that increases direct farm program spending by $73 billion over 10 years and also contains $243 billion for food stamps.

* Health Care: In December 2003, Mr. Bush signed into law a new prescription drug entitlement program he championed. When passed by Congress, the administration estimated that the program would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Subsequently, the administration revised the $400 billion estimate upward to $530 billion.

* Amnesty for illegal aliens: In January of this year, Mr. Bush proposed "legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States, and to those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program and have been offered employment here."

Even in the case of the Iraq War, the administration has pursued an internationalist agenda while appearing to advance an "America First" foreign policy. Mr. Bush launched an offensive war against Iraq for the stated purpose of disarming that regime of its reputed Weapons of Mass Destruction pursuant to UN Security Council resolutions. He did so without the constitutionally required declaration of war, just as Bill Clinton and other presidents have done since Truman.

During the months leading up to the Iraq War, Mr. Bush at times sounded critical of the UN, but his criticism was based on his desire that the UN put teeth behind its resolutions and not risk irrelevancy. Mr. Bush wanted the UN to become very relevant. Though many perceived that going to war without an explicit Security Council "go ahead" would make the UN less relevant, the war is actually making the UN more relevant--just as Mr. Bush had hoped, even if he could not have foreseen all of the particulars.

"Not a Dime's Worth of Difference"

As the Bush administration's liberal agenda has become more apparent, there has been growing discontent among genuine, grass-roots conservatives. Yet the administration's liberalism was very predictable. As John Birch Society Chief Executive Officer G. Vance Smith noted in the organization's February 2001 Bulletin, which appeared just after Mr. Bush assumed office:

It does not take a prophet or a genius to predict the course of the incoming administration, any more than it requires a gifted individual to predict that dogs will bark or ducks will quack. That is the nature of the creatures. Candidate Bush did not receive severe treatment from the Insider-controlled media or the "liberal" wing of the Republican Party anywhere near as caustic as that meted out to Barry Goldwater or even Dan Quayle. If the Insiders had perceived him as a real threat, rather than a fully cooperating employee, they could have employed any number of means to derail his candidacy. And with CFR members Richard Cheney as Vice President, Colin Powell as Secretary of State, Christine Todd Whitman heading the EPA, and Condoleezza Rice as National Security Adviser, we can peruse the administration's blueprints ... in [the CFR journal] Foreign Affairs, right along with the Insiders.

Many good Americans intend to vote for President Bush because, they believe, Senator Kerry would be even worse. In terms of stated positions, they have a point--no matter how far to the left Republican presidents such as George W. Bush move, liberal Democrats such as John Kerry are always willing to move even farther to the left, making the Republican president appear "conservative" by comparison. However, Republican presidents are often more effective getting liberal programs through, since they can garner support from Republican congressmen who would likely oppose the same programs if proposed by a liberal Democrat president. The new Medicare prescription drug program is a case in point--it falls short of "Hillary-care" but is still more than Mr. Clinton was able to accomplish on the health-care front during his eight years as president.

Another indication of how a Republican president can be more effective than Democrats at installing Big Government is the overall growth in the federal budget. Federal spending has been growing at a faster rate with George W. Bush in the White House than it did with Bill Clinton as president. Even during the Ronald Reagan presidency, federal spending grew--at a slower rate than it did under his immediate predecessor, Jimmy Carter, but at a faster rate than it did under Mr. Clinton.

For those who refuse to vote for the "lesser of two evils," but who insist on voting for a genuine alternative to the Establishment candidates, there are plenty of presidential candidates to pick from. The problem, so far as capturing the White House is concerned, is that no one outside the two major party candidates has a chance. Constitutionalist candidates who want to return our nation back to its roots of limited government should run for Congress, not president. Why waste all of the time and money in trying to win a race that is closed to non Establishment candidates?

Consider the last presidential election: Green Party nominee Ralph Nader (not a genuine outsider anyway) did best among the third party candidates, garnering less than 3 percent of the vote. He was followed by Patrick Buchanan of the Reform Party (0.43 percent), Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party (0.36 percent), and Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party (0.09 percent). The last time a third party candidate carried one or more states was when George Wallace ran on the American Independent Party ticket in 1968. Wallace famously said during that election campaign that there's "not a dime's worth of difference" between the two major political parties. He was right about the problem, though his third party effort did not change the reality.

The Game Is Rigged

The reason there is not "a dime's worth of difference" is because both the national Democratic Party and the national Republican Party are beholden to the same power elite, which also uses its control of the mass media to make of break presidential candidates. The John Birch Society has warned against this semi-hidden Establishment and its "new world order" agenda for many years--daring to call it a conspiracy. Liberal history professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University acknowledged the existence of this Insider-controlled Establishment in his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope--calling it "an international Anglophile network." But unlike the JBS, Quigley was supportive of this network: "I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.... [M]y chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."

Writing more than a generation ago, Quigley recognized that Establishment aims could be threatened by real choices among the major party candidates, and so he advocated that the two major parties become virtual clones of each other. "The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two ... parties more national and international," he lamented in Tragedy and Hope. "The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

For any challenger seeking presidential office, Quigley outlined the basic policies a candidate must support to gain entry to the White House:

   The policies that are vital and necessary
   for America are no longer subjects
   of significant disagreement, but
   are disputable only in details of procedure,
   priority, or method: we must
   remain strong, continue to function as
   a great world Power in cooperation
   with other Powers, avoid high-level
   war, keep the economy moving without
   significant slump, help other
   countries do the same, provide the
   basic social necessities for all our citizens,
   open up opportunities for social
   shifts for those willing to work to
   achieve them, and defend the basic
   Western outlook of diversity, pluralism,
   cooperation, and the rest of it, as
   already described. These things any
   national American party hoping to
   win a presidential election must accept.
   But either party in office becomes
   in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising,
   and vigorless. Then it should
   be possible to replace it, every four
   years if necessary, by the other party,
   which will be none of these things but
   will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately
   the same basic policies.
   [Emphasis added.]

Though Quigley described the supposedly "vital and necessary" policies in very generalized terms, there is little doubt he meant both socialism ("provide the basic social necessities for all our citizens") and internationalism ("function as a great world Power in cooperation with other Powers"), including foreign aid ("help other countries").

Quigley's Tragedy and Hope was published just two years after Republican Barry Goldwater's failed presidential bid. The historian viewed Goldwater's candidacy as an anomaly along the continuum of Establishment-controlled presidential elections. "The capture of the Republican National Party by the extremist elements of the Republican Congressional Party in 1964, and their effort to elect Barry Goldwater to the Presidency with the petty-bourgeois extremists alone, was only a temporary aberration on the American political scene," he wrote. The power elite made sure that Goldwater would not get elected by putting their media smear machine into high gear. A memorable example of that smear was a campaign commercial showing an innocent, young child counting to 10 while pulling off the petals of a daisy, followed by an atomic explosion--supposedly a glimpse of what to expect from a Goldwater presidency. When the dust settled on election day, Goldwater ended up with only 38 percent of the vote.

Since Goldwater's derailed presidential bid, the two major parties have become much more similar, just as Quigley hoped. Yet too few Americans understand that the reason they can "throw the rascals out" without significant policy shifts is because the fix is in al the top.

Incidentally, one of Quigley's former students became president of the United States, replacing the other party's hold on the White House, but still pursuing, "with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies." The former student, Bill Clinton, used the occasion of his acceptance speech at the 1992 DEmocratic Convention to make a personal tribute to his former history professor. Recalling the "summons to citizenship" he had earlier received from President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Clinton said that "as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley...."

Presidential Election Hysteria

Because of the control the power elite now exerts over presidential polities, it is not realistic to expect that, at this time, a genuine conservative can be elected president. Of course, if the office of the presidency were as powerful as the Establishment opinion molders would like us to believe, we would have no choice but to try, no matter how hopeless the odds. But, fortunately, that is not the case. Under the Constitution, the Congress is much more powerful than the presidency. The Congress, for instance, possesses all legislative powers, which means that the president possesses none. The Congress, not the president, also possesses the power to declare war.

Regarding the war-making powers, Alexander Hamilton put presidential powers in perspective when he wrote in The Federalist, No. 69: "The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies--all which, by the Constitution ... would appertain to the legislature." (Emphasis in original.)

It is true that presidents, including the current one, have usurped powers including the war-making power, but Congress can rein in a rogue president by asserting its constitutional powers, including impeachment if necessary. That is, a constitutionalist Congress could begin restoring good government even if a bad president occupied the White House. But the inverse is not true: A constitutionalist president would not be able to do much good without a constitutionalist Congress to enact his legislative agenda.

Yet the national media focuses on presidential races to the Extent that it could actually cause many to believe, falsely, that the presidency is the federal government, when in fact it is one of three branches. Congressman Samuel Pettengill, in his 1940 book Smoke-Screen, made an observation that could not be more apt if written today: "At the present time the attention of the nation is largely and somewhat hysterically centered upon the question of who will be nominated and elected President of the United States.... But the nomination and Election of a President

is not going to pay the national debt. It is not automatically going to cure unemployment either of idle dollars or idle men. It is not going to balance the budget."

"Any man who is President of the United States by virtue of his commanding position may greatly aid in these matters," Pettengill acknowledged, "but he cannot accomplish them. If legislation is wise there is a good chance it will be wisely administered, but if the legislation is bad, even the best administration cannot cure the evil." Pettengill recognized that the notion that the president should fix problems properly belonging in the domain of Congress is itself part of the problem. During the 1930s, Congressman Pettengill fought Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" socialism as a member of FDR's own party. In his 1940 book, he recommended that Americans focus on Congress and elect good candidates regardless of their party affiliations.

The Road Back

Unlike capturing the White House, improving Congress--specifically the House of Representatives--is a realistic goal that can be accomplished one congressional district at a time. The House is closer to the people than the Senate or the other two branches of government. There are 435 congressmen, each of whom must be elected every two years. The Establishment Insiders, even with their control of the major media, cannot influence the outcome of 435 congressional races every two years--each representing a relatively small constituency compared to the nation as a whole--like they do the presidential race every four years. Just as it is unrealistic for grass-roots activists to compete against the special interests on the presidential playing field, it is also unrealistic for those special interests to compete against the people in local districts--if sufficient numbers of local citizens are informed, involved and organized.

The understanding needed to make realistic the election of a constitutionalist in a congressional district can only be created through year-round activism, election year and non election year alike. Simply casting a ballot every two years is not sufficient. Good Americans hoping to change Congress need to inform themselves and others. They need to stay abreast of new developments--including what their congressman is doing and saying. They need to apply informed pressure on their congressman. But most importantly, they need to activate and organize more of their fellow citizens--and encourage them to write to their congressman as well--so that the informed pressure on the congressman will rise. Congressmen are very alert to such trends.

Once sufficient understanding is created in any congressional district, the political process should take care of itself. Congressmen who want to stay in office (which would be most of them!) would have to start being less attentive to the special interests and more attentive to their informed constituents. Those who refuse to respond to the changing political winds would lose their seats to others who are willing to offer what the voters want; but by and large the greater change would be in the form of congressmen doing what is necessary to stay in office.

The end result, in a congressional district where the understanding is created and where voters apply informed pressure on their congressman, would not only be a choice on election day but, very likely, more than one good choice. That is, instead of choosing between socialist A and socialist B, voters in such a district might actually have the luxury of choosing between constitutionalist A and constitutionalist B. What a refreshing change that would be!

If citizens are educated and mobilized in a sufficient number of congressional districts, the day will come when the House will be reclaimed for constitutionalism. All by itself, even without the support of the president of the Senate, a constitutionalist House could prevent the enactment of any new unconstitutional legislation and (by refusing to appropriate the funding) effectively kill existing unconstitutional programs. And if sufficient awareness is built, in time it would be possible to repair the structural damage done to our constitutional system. For instance, it may be possible to repeal the 17th Amendment, which destroyed the Senate's function in representing state governments. It might even be possible some day to break the major party cartel's hold on the electoral college, which would increase the chances on eventually electing constitutionalist presidential candidates.

In the meantime, the question persists: Which presidential candidate should we vote for? Many of our readers will un doubtedly vote for whom they perceive to be the "lesser of two evils"; many others will vote for an alternative party candidate. Our only recommendation regarding this specific question is to vote your conscience --recognizing that the presidency is the wrong battlefront for attempting to restore good government. It is the wrong battle front not only because the fix is in at the top, but because of the very nature of our constitutional system of government--which gives us a president to administer our laws, not a dictator to make them.

Under our system, the Congress provides the most favorable terrain for making our voices heard and restoring good government. And so our most important recommendation is to focus grass-roots activism on Congress without getting sidetracked by the hoopla of presidential campaigning. As James Madison so presciently observed in The Federalist No. 63, "[W]e are warranted in believing that ... the House of Representatives, with the people on their side, will at all times be able to bring back the Constitution to its primitive form and principles."