In a much larger article about the aspects of Bush’s presidency that history will regard as most controversial, The Economist presents an analysis of the ways in which he has increased the power of the presidency. Again Reagan looks like a ray of hope in the darkness in contrast to Bush (and remember, for instance, how the former undid decades of work by the labor movement in a morning when he fired all the air traffic controllers?)

A subset of [the Bush administration’s] reaction against scrutiny is the use of what might be called government by small print: slipping additions into law at the last minute or tinkering with the wording of rules that implement laws. As a recent series in the Washington Post argued, such changes often appear minor but can have a big impact. By changing the word “waste” to “fill” in a rule governing coal-mining, for instance, the administration allowed an increase in strip-mining in West Virginia. By adding two sentences about scientific evidence to an unrelated budget bill, it gave itself increased authority to rule in regulatory disputes.

Perhaps the most disturbing way in which the administration has increased its power has been through its public-relations machine. Thomas Jefferson said long ago that a well-informed electorate is the most important constraint on government. By issuing partial and sometimes misleading information, the Bush administration has hampered such scrutiny.

Consider for instance the arguments for tax cuts. Here, Mr Bush made claims about the cost of the cuts and their distributional impact that he should have known were misleading. In 2000, he claimed the first round of cuts would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, a quarter of the budget surplus at that point. On his own figures, the share was a third, not a quarter, and he arrived at the figure only through outrageous accounting gimmicks that he is now campaigning to forbid.

He also asserted that the cuts would provide “the greatest help for those most in need”, providing a Treasury study to back up his claim. In the past, Treasury studies have been impartial. But this one arrived at its conclusion by leaving out the parts of the tax cut that most benefited the wealthiest (such as the repeal of the estate tax). By any normal measure, the tax cuts have been regressive—hardly “the greatest help for those most in need”.

Taking facts out of context, politicising government studies and presenting anomalous examples as typical are hardly unique to the Bush administration. But they still do damage. The system of checks and balances—indeed, democracy itself—requires voters to be able to understand the impact of actions taken on their behalf, so they can apportion credit or blame fairly. If it is impossible to tell how much of the administration's arguments for war were vindicated or disproved, or who the tax cuts really helped, then proper public accounting is impossible.

Beyond that, members of the administration have occasionally acted in ways that have discouraged public debate directly. In May 2002, the White House's communications director, Dan Bartlett, argued in the Washington Post that Democratic criticisms of administration actions before September 11th were “exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.” Mr Ashcroft had earlier conflated civil-liberties activists with terrorist sympathisers, telling Congress: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists.” All this came near to arguing that, after September 11th, debate itself could be treasonous.

Mr Bush has frequently said that voters will give their verdict in November, and that he looks forward to it. But quadrennial elections are not the only means of restraining government. The genius of the American system is that administrations must work within a system of checks and balances. These checks have themselves been checked.

Congress is the main competing source of power. It has become more like an adjunct to the administration. Information encourages public scrutiny. The flow has been reduced. The administration's actions are filtered through civil-service rules and procedures. The rules have been chopped and changed. A free press is essential to the working of democracy. Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, rejected that view, arguing “I don't believe you [the press] have a check-and-balance function.” On occasion, the administration has even crossed the line separating the interests of the state from the party by using taxpayers' money to finance advertising for the Medicare bill.

Almost all governments bend the truth. This one has seldom resorted to outright falsehood; instead, the administration has manipulated public information and breached basic standards of political conduct in Congress, the civil service and public debate. Whatever the merits of increasing presidential authority, Mr Bush has achieved his aim less by winning support for more power than by weakening the authority of other institutions.