An interview with Sidney Blumenthal, former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and the author of "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." In a series of columns and essays that Blumenthal wrote in the three years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unifying theme began to emerge: that George W. Bush, billed by himself and by many others as a conservative, is in fact a radical-more radical than any president in American history. Blumenthal argues that these radical actions are not haphazard, but deliberately intended to fundamentally change the presidency and the government. He shows not only the historical precedents for radical governing, but also how Bush has taken his methods to unique extremes.

Blumenthal is a regular columnist for the Guardian of London and for Salon, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker and the Washington Post. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security.