Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, February 13, 2010 11:11:34 AM
Getting It Backwards
Obama misunderstands his constitutional role.
February 15, 2010,
Vol. 15, No. 21
Democratic postmortems on Barack Obama’s disappointing first year in
the Oval Office have emphasized, as the president himself did,
difficulties inherited from “the last eight years.” Republicans, for
their part, credit public opposition to Obama’s overreaching policies.
But a full explanation goes much deeper. Obama is failing because he
has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down.
The 2010 State of the Union address nicely summed up Obama’s
topsy-turvy approach to the presidency. He pressed for a new jobs bill,
more domestic spending, and health care nationalization. He attributed
his political setbacks not to broad opposition to his domestic
ambitions but to “a deficit of trust—deep and corrosive doubts about
how Washington works that have been growing for years.”
National security amounted to an afterthought. He devoted one
paragraph each—out of the approximately 110 paragraphs in the speech—to
Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorism. It is as if Lincoln had spent most of
his Inaugural Addresses on the transcontinental railroad and the
Homestead Act.
Obama believes the president should lead a revolution in society,
the economy, and the political system, but defer on national security
and foreign policy to the other branches of government. This upends the
Framers’ vision of the presidency. They thought the chief executive’s
powers would expand broadly to meet external challenges while playing a
modest role at home.
The latest Democratic president is repeating the mistake of the
first. When Thomas Jefferson entered office 210 years ago, Chief
Justice John Marshall warned that Jefferson would “embody himself in
the House of Representatives.” This would “increase his personal
power,” Marshall predicted, but it would lead to the “weakening of the
office of the President.” The chief justice meant that his political
rival (and distant cousin) would gain power by joining forces with his
party’s legislative majorities. But the combination would realize the
Framers’ fear that Congress would come to dominate the executive branch.
Marshall’s observation explains much about Obama’s first year. By
associating himself so closely with congressional Democrats, Obama
became responsible for their every misstep. Their reckless overspending
and earmarks became his. Their corrupt deal to buy Senator Ben Nelson’s
support for nationalized health care became his sordid bargain. Their
command-and-control approach to global warming, which will set
nationwide limits on energy use and industrial production, became his
socialist program.
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/getting-it-backwards