Unprecedented Arrogance From Ignorance
Few Americans are old enough to remember the last time a sitting U.S. President – Franklin D. Roosevelt – publicly intimidated the Supreme Court over the outcome of a specific case under deliberation.
Since FDR, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Dance Remix somehow all managed to make it through their Presidencies without feeling the need to bully-up on the Supremes to overcome an oral argument too lame to stand on its merits.
And then there is President ObamaCare. In a press conference about trade with our neighboring countries Canada and Mexico, President Obama warned the Court against overturning his namesake – because it was passed by a majority in a duly-elected legislature – saying such an unthinkable thing was “unprecedented.”
For reasons that continue to defy human understanding, the two most obvious follow-on questions went unasked by the assembled corps of professionally trained and fully-credentialed crack national journalists: 1) what other kinds of laws are there, and 2) what did any of that gibberish have to do with Mexico and Canada?
For a guy who graduated from Columbia and Harvard and taught law at University of Chicago, the President seems to be eighth-grade-ignorant about the separation of powers and the checks and balances of government under our Constitution, that thing he swore an oath to defend with his hand on that other book some unelected guy was holding.
It’s not like this is an aberration or something. He taunted Congress in their own house at the State of the Union, dispensing with all of Article I in a single “if you won’t do it, I will” bluster. He sues states with frightening regularity, erasing such inconveniences as the 9th and 10th amendments. His is the “Fast and Furious” administration – the guys who do what they want because they can.
In case it matters to his devotees, “unprecedented” means never been done before, which seems an inappropriate adjective to attach to an action that has been taken on 163 prior occasions. And not to be snarky about it, but overturning unconstitutional laws that are passed by elected legislatures is what the Supreme Court does; it’s why we have one.
In the 1950’s the Court didn’t vote on some non-binding Hallmark Card resolution that said segregation was bad; the Court voted that specific laws and ordinances – all of them passed by a majority in a duly elected legislature – were unconstitutional.
Had the court not overturned those laws more than half a century ago, President Obama would be known as Mr. Obama, the negro (or worse) community organizer from Chicago. He should know the history of the Court and those unconstitutional segregation laws well – it was his Democrat party that passed them.
I think I know what has got the President all twisted up over the prospect of having his Health Care Bill struck down by the Supreme Court. Without it, he has nothing for his Presidential Library, and it’s getting to be that time when Presidents on their way out the door start thinking about the library.
It would be awkward to be the only President without one – and don’t think for a minute that Bill Clinton wouldn’t rub it in every chance he got – but sometimes nothing really is better than something: “Welcome to the Obama Library…on the left is the Bin Laden room…alrighty-then, thank you for coming and don’t forget to stop at the gift shop on the way out.”
President Obama is my President, too, and I hate to see my President fail. But if the choice is a) seeing our President fail and b) surrendering our Constitution to avoid the appearance of failure, the choice is simple. In our system, the Presidency is temporary and the Constitution is permanent – bring in the next guy.
It’s a little late now to be worrying about what the Supreme Court might think about ObamaCare; the President should have thought about that when it was being written up and shoved down our throats. Everybody swore the same oath. Bush tried that lame “not my job, man” on some of the rank stuff he signed even when he knew better – we all called him on it; it’s not like anyone is getting picked on here.
The Constitution is not conservative and the Constitution is not liberal; the Constitution is limiting. It establishes the borders between liberty on one side and government on the other. It defines which of those two is the servant and which is the master; who is the dog and who does the whispering.
It forces us to cooperate, to tolerate, to accept each other as equals, and to live honestly as free people. It is not a difficult document to understand; it is a difficult document to abide by. And that’s ok – we are not entitled to live easy; we are entitled to live free.
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