It was announced that the president “failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives . . . and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas . . . thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment.”

That quote comes not from this week’s mounting constitutional crisis — spawned by Congress’s inquiry into the attorney-general firings — but from Article Three of the 1974 impeachment charges against Richard M. Nixon.

But make no mistake: the Bush administration is attempting to codify Nixonian secrecy as official constitutional doctrine. It would be a perfectly appropriate, if disastrous, legacy for this presidency, which has operated from day one with obsessive secrecy and unprecedented usurpation of power.

The effects of that conduct are all around us, preventing us citizens from performing the most basic functions of democracy. We can’t tell whether our government has done a good job of protecting us from terrorist attacks, when the only incidents the Bush administration discloses are ridiculously puffed-up tales, such as the “plot” against Fort Dix. We can’t tell whether the Iraq “surge” is working when the Bush administration has repeatedly lied about our “progress” at every juncture to date.

How can we know who to vote for in the future if we don’t know what’s going on?

To keep us permanently in the dark about our own government, Bush is now trying to go much further than Nixon ever dared to: he is proposing to toss the court’s 1974 ruling on executive privilege in the trash, and daring anyone to stop him. At that time the court, while recognizing some executive privilege for a president’s personal documents (though not, in that case, the infamous secret tapes), declared that privilege applies only to the president, not to his staff. Raising his middle finger to today’s Congressional Democrats and the 1974 court, Bush’s lawyer claimed on Friday that executive privilege extends to “discussions and deliberations . . . among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch.” In other words, everything and everyone.

With that declaration of blanket monarchical authority, Bush refused to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony from his staff on the firings of attorneys general. He is also expected to reject separate subpoenas issued this past week — for information on the domestic-eavesdropping program — to the Justice Department and Vice-President Dick Cheney (who has agreed to be part of the executive branch for the purpose of claiming privilege).

Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said this weekend that, if Bush does not back down, he will call for Congress to hold the president in contempt. This would trigger prosecution of Bush, presumably leading in short order to a Supreme Court ruling.

Given the dismaying and logic-defying decisions of this year’s court, that’s a frightening thought. As if to seal their own irrelevance, Senate Democrats did nothing to stop Bush from seating right-wing ideologues John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the bench for the rest of their working lives, and liberals have whimpered softly as the Roberts court has ignored precedent, law, and reason in their haste to undo what conservatives see as a century of unfortunate protection of liberty and justice.

Don’t think for a minute that Bush would be unwilling to ask his shiny new ultra-conservative Supreme Court to rewrite the power of the presidency, or that some sense of caution or principle would prevent the five-person conservative majority from granting his wish.

If Bush’s interpretation of executive privilege stands, the executive branch of our government will become effectively immune from oversight. Congress will have no meaningful ability to determine what is actually happening inside any office or agency. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, and staff throughout the government will have no incentive to obey laws, comply with directives, or provide truthful information of any kind.

It’s a horrifying prospect. Yet, in contrast with the national reaction to Nixon’s rejection of subpoenas, Bush’s imperial defiance has been greeted with a national shrug. Certainly there has been no suggestion that Bush’s actions constitute an impeachable offense — as Congress believed Nixon’s to be 23 years ago.

Perhaps we as a nation have become so accustomed to this administration’s lies and secrecy that it’s hard to muster a sense of outrage anymore. We’re just waiting for the White House door to hit Bush on the ass on his way out in January 2009. But by then, we may have lost our right to know what’s going on behind it.

Democrats must not back down. They should call for a vote to find Bush in contempt and use every tool in their power to force the issue, including the threat to withhold funds, shut down government operations, and even hold impeachment hearings.

They must also call on presidential candidates — of every party — to denounce Bush’s view of presidential power, and to pledge to honor congressional subpoenas if elected. The candidates have been disturbingly mute on this showdown, and they, along with Congress, should not be allowed to get away with it.