Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the term ``imperial presidency'' three decades ago, he captured the tendency of modern U.S. chief executives -- Richard Nixon at the time -- to behave as autocrats.

Yet the administration of George W. Bush has surpassed them all when it comes to hiding its deliberations, spying on citizens, ignoring the law and trampling on the Constitution, says Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe.

The confluence of 9/11 and Vice President Dick Cheney's deep belief in something called the Unitary Executive Theory has turned Schlesinger's bad dream into a latter-day nightmare for the U.S., Savage argues robustly in ``Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.''

Since Bush declared his ``War on Terror,'' the nation has been beset by legal and constitutional issues including torture, eavesdropping, kangaroo courts and far-fetched diktats, he says.

Savage captured the Pulitzer this year for his lonely reporting of one of the administration's most telling imperial techniques: the innocuously named ``signing statements'' that the White House appends to presidential signatures on laws passed by Congress. These documents essentially indicate that the commander in chief is signing because he must, but will do as he pleases.

``If a president has the power to instruct the government not to enforce laws that he alone has declared to be unconstitutional, then he can free himself from the need to obey laws that restrict his own actions,'' Savage writes.

Bush's Svengali

Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar whom Savage cites with approval, says the administration's freewheeling interpretations of the law represent ``a defining moment in the constitutional history of the United States.''

Bush is strangely absent from this account, and the implication is that the president is at best the dupe of his Svengali, Cheney. Not by accident does Savage refer to ``the Bush Cheney administration'' throughout the book.

Cheney, who worked in the Nixon, Ford and first Bush administrations, came to the vice presidency with strong views of the subservient role of Congress, where he served in the 1980s. The legal theories that he and his lieutenants expounded in the wake of 9/11 took alarming forms, in Savage's view.

The author cites, for example, a binding Justice Department rationale for using torture in interrogating terror suspects. This was, says Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, ``a stunning failure of lawyerly craft'' and ``perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read.''

Military Lawyers Resist

Koh wasn't alone in questioning the administration's jurisprudence, says Savage, who has a law degree and covers the Supreme Court. ``The Bush-Cheney legal team was made up of very bright, highly educated people with sterling academic credentials, yet few legal specialists of comparable expertise outside the government believed their legal theories,'' he says.

Among the few inspiring portraits in this book are those of military lawyers at the Pentagon who stood up to the White House on such issues as habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions. Unlike the people giving the orders, these brave men and women took their jobs, and their democracy, seriously.

Although ``Takeover'' is a muscular piece of prose, I would fault Savage for getting stuck in the high grass of detail and the slow gears of what happened when. His thoroughness can weigh down his account just where it needs more sweep and elevation. He's also not much for atmosphere, color or portraiture.

Still, this is a solid and deeply troubling piece of reporting. Any readers who doubt that presidencies have become imperial should test their skepticism against it.

``Takeover'' is from Little, Brown (381 pages, $25.99).

(Charles Trueheart is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Charles Trueheart at charlestrueheart@yahoo.com.

Last Updated: September 6, 2007 02:29 EDT