Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy was released on September 5. Wednesday night, I was told that Takeover will debut at #24 on the next New York Times expanded bestseller list for hardcover non-fiction. You can probably imagine that I am hugely excited to see that this book is starting to reach an audience.

This is not merely because I am a first-time author and so this whole experience is new for me. Back in the summer of 2006, when I wrote the book proposal amid the surge of interest in my articles about the Bush-Cheney signing statements (which now seems like such a tiny slice of the whole to me), this is how I described my motivation for undertaking such a project:

The precedents being set now will have repercussions for the country that will long outlast all current political fights [by establishing new power that will lay in wait] for some future president to pick up and use in a way that may be unimaginable today. The constitutional system itself is being turned into something that would be unrecognizable to the Founders. And this transformation has been put into motion largely without public discussion or debate about whether this is what American society, as a whole, wants. It is critical that American society recognize what is happening to presidential power. ... That is why I am writing this book.

To all of you who out there who are reading Takeover, my sincerest gratitude! And if you find it valuable and engaging, please spread the word.

My original plan for Thursday’s entry was to take another chapter – perhaps rising executive secrecy or efforts to impose greater White House control over the permanent government, from the military’s JAGs to Justice Department lawyers, regulatory agencies, government scientists, grant-making offices, and CIA intelligence analysts – and extract out a few choice morsels, as I did from the Supreme Court chapter on Wednesday. But unfortunately, I cannot write that much after all because Little Brown has designated today as my “national radio tour day.”

I am booked for no fewer than 17 live radio interviews today at local talk stations around the country. It starts with a call-in to Michigan Talk Radio at 6:40 a.m. and will not wrap up until I finish talking to WKCT-AM in Nashville at 5:59 p.m. I’m curious about whether my voice will last, and about how the day will go more generally. It’s not likely that most of the hosts I will be speaking to will have read the book. It’s also, I have found, hard to do justice to the book in short segments. Early readers have told me that the book’s power comes from its accumulated details that show in fact, rather than telling in argument, what I am trying to demonstrate. But I’ll muddle through.

Since I don’t have time to compose a lengthier blog piece, then, I’d instead like to point your attention to a new essay I wrote for The Nation based on research conducted for the book. The title of this piece is “Reaganites Reconsider.” You may find that it adds an interesting nuance to the discussion that continues to take place in the comments section about partisan politics and executive power. In any case, I’d like to hear your reactions to it.