This is probably not news to most people but for the last holdouts who still believe that President Obama is going to lead us into an era of open government and constitutional restraint, I would hope that the events of the last two weeks have finally completely obliterated that idea.
I could put this in my own words, but I can't say it any better than Ross Douthat did in yesterday's Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/opinion/sunday/douthat-all-the-presidents-privileges.html
WHEN George W. Bush was president of the United States, it was an article of faith among liberals that many of his policies were not just misguided but unconstitutional as well. On issues large and small, from the conduct of foreign policy to the firing of United States attorneys, the Bush White House pushed an expansive view of executive authority, and Democrats pushed right back — accusing it of shredding the constitution, claiming near-imperial powers and even corrupting the lawyers working in its service.
That was quite some time ago. Last week the Obama White House invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from a Congressional investigation into a botched gunrunning operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The previous week the White House invoked powers that President Obama himself had previously claimed to lack, unilaterally revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population.
Both moves were entirely characteristic of this presidency. Obama campaigned as a consistent critic of the Bush administration’s understanding of executive power — and a critic with a background in constitutional law, no less. But apart from his disavowal of waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without trial.
These moves have met some principled opposition from the left. But the president’s liberal critics are usually academics, journalists and (occasionally) cable-TV hosts, with no real mass constituency behind them.
The majority of Democrats, polls suggest, have followed roughly the same path as the former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, a staunch critic of Bush’s wartime policies who now serves as a legal adviser to the State Department, supplying constitutional justifications for Obama’s drone campaigns. What was outrageous under a Republican has become executive branch business-as-usual under a Democrat.
On domestic matters, the liberal silence is even more deafening. It was conservatives who pointed out the dubious constitutionality of Obama’s immigration gambit. Among liberals, it was taken for granted that the worthy ends were more important than the means.
Two forces are at work here. One is the intersection of power and partisanship, which produces predictable hypocrisies when one side passes from critiquing authority to embodying it.
These turnabouts can be quite startling. A progressive Web site noted the irony of liberal opinion’s shift on Gitmo: “Under the leadership of a President who campaigned with the promise to close the facility but reneged, support for the detention center may be at its highest level ever.”
But these turns are not always a bad thing. Sometimes it was the original partisan critique that was overdrawn, and sometimes power educates rather than corrupts. If the view from the State Department looks different from the view from Yale Law School, it isn’t necessarily the State Department that’s wrong.
What’s more perilous is the extent to which these sudden shifts reflect something unique to constitutional debates — namely that arguments for constitutional limits tend not to sway people who don’t already have a political incentive to support them.
Partisan about-faces are inevitable, but they’re arguably easier on constitutional matters. Change your mind on immigration, and your constituents may well revolt. Change your mind on whether a president has the power to do things on immigration policy that your constituents already support, though, and only your partisan critics and the occasional law professor will care.
This is why it’s so remarkable that our constitutional order has lasted so long, given the perpetual incentive — common to both parties, and all three branches of government — to abandon its safeguards in order to push a particular agenda.
Today those incentives are strongest for Democrats — visible in their support for Obama’s more dubiously constitutional forays, and also in the widespread liberal attempt to explain his struggles by casting him as a Gulliver tied down by an antiquated system of government.
Conservative pundits have noted that similar explanations were proferred to explain the failures of Jimmy Carter. That in and of itself isn’t proof that they’re wrong. But it suggests the possibility that some of the ways this president has been baffled, legislatively and perhaps soon in the courts, reflect the genius of our constitutional system rather than its failings. It’s a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that’s designed to defend itself.
24 Jun 12
Is that how you spend your time, just attacking President Obama all day? Why if it were not for the Tea Party and the GOP the economy would be booming, terror would disappear, and every day would be Christmas. But no, no, no, we just had to vote against the democrats in 2010.
24 Jun 12
Originally posted by sh76A Republican would still be worse. Substantially worse.
This is probably not news to most people but for the last holdouts who still believe that President Obama is going to lead us into an era of open government and constitutional restraint, I would hope that the events of the last two weeks have finally completely obliterated that idea.
I could put this in my own words, but I can't say it any better than Ross D ...[text shortened]... a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that’s designed to defend itself.[/quote]
24 Jun 12
Originally posted by sh76I like Ross and much of what he states is true, but as far as the change in immigration policy given the existing laws which grant wide discretion to the Executive Branch in enforcing the immigration laws, I do not see a valid argument for the policy's illegality, much less unconstitutionality.
This is probably not news to most people but for the last holdouts who still believe that President Obama is going to lead us into an era of open government and constitutional restraint, I would hope that the events of the last two weeks have finally completely obliterated that idea.
I could put this in my own words, but I can't say it any better than Ross D ...[text shortened]... a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that’s designed to defend itself.[/quote]
24 Jun 12
Originally posted by sh76Moronic debate.
This is probably not news to most people but for the last holdouts who still believe that President Obama is going to lead us into an era of open government and constitutional restraint, I would hope that the events of the last two weeks have finally completely obliterated that idea.
I could put this in my own words, but I can't say it any better than Ross D ...[text shortened]... a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that’s designed to defend itself.[/quote]
24 Jun 12
Originally posted by Metal BrainWhat is the difference between a Republican and a democrat?
What is the difference between Obama's policies and Bush's policies? Gay marriage doesn't count since he was against it before he was for it.
Most Republicans know their party sucks.
26 Jun 12
Originally posted by rwingettWhy are you avoiding the question? I smell weakness because of it.
If you can't see any difference between the two, then you don't really have any business being on this forum.
Obama is a DINO (democrat in name only) and it is obvious to anyone who can see past blind party loyalty. Obama's policies (in practice) are republican policies. If you can't see that you are the one who has no business being on this forum.
26 Jun 12
Originally posted by Metal BrainI never claimed that Obama was any good. I only claimed that a Republican would be worse. No matter how far to the right Obama strays, a Republican would always be even more to the right of that. And hence any Republican will always be worse than Obama. It's the difference between bad and horrible.
Why are you avoiding the question? I smell weakness because of it.
Obama is a DINO (democrat in name only) and it is obvious to anyone who can see past blind party loyalty. Obama's policies (in practice) are republican policies. If you can't see that you are the one who has no business being on this forum.