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Jewish World Review
Jan. 30, 2013/ 19 Shevat, 5773
The Nixonian Obama
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Richard Nixon got governing wrong, very wrong, and went so far in ignoring legal prohibitions that distraught opinion jettisoned him from the White House. Though far removed from Nixonian criminality, President Barack Obama seems the least inhibited violator of constitutional safeguards since then, and just might get away with it unless we as a people still care about such things.
The Nixonian failings were summed up in "The Imperial Presidency," a 1973 book written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian who also spoke out on current events and served in the White House during the Kennedy administration. He argued it was growing war powers in a turbulent world that led to expanded domestic abuses of foundational principles.
These principles, these grand doctrines that have to do with liberty, justice, orderliness and governmental limits, are well summed up by the phrase " rule of law." In a republic, it means that representatives of the people determine laws that will govern not just us but the government leaders themselves.
A far more trustworthy arrangement than allowing a few arbitrarily to impose their druthers on the rest of us, the rule of law was made a special wonder in America by our Constitution. It pledges in amendments to protect our individual rights and masterfully divides up power so that one part of government over here checks and balances another over there.
Schlesinger's concern was the imbalance of presidential power that had kept growing and growing until it got entirely out of hand in the Nixon years. His was an administration that followed others in promulgating war acts Congress had not approved, that avoided enforcing laws through varied devices and grossly overstepped still other bounds, ultimately even plotting a burglary. It was as if the only curb on a president was an election every four years, Schlesinger said.
Our democracy did finally catch up with Nixon. I can in fact remember people happily saying after he resigned that "the system works." But does it? In Obama, we have a president who, among multiple other constitutional bombardments, forgot Congress in his revisions of at least three American laws and made appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and a newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without Senate approval. A president can so act under law if the Senate is in recess. The Senate -- by a determination only it can make -- was not in recess at the time.
There's a dismaying incongruity here. These two agencies have extraordinary authority, are answerable to hardly anyone or anything, and issue massive gobs of rulings on matters large and small, itself a mighty march from the sensitivities that inspired a revolution. Meanwhile, the man making the appointments is mainly regulated by a Constitution with relatively few rules and can't get them straight, even though he could potentially visit far more catastrophe on us than those citizens the agencies are aiming to control.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled that Obama acted as if he can appoint people to such positions whenever and however he pleases, and flatly says: "This cannot be law." Hurrah, but don't suppose this ruling is the final word or that Obama won't yet sneak past the law on this and far more, a thought that brings us back to the Schlesinger book.
The last chapter, written three decades ago, frets about future presidents -- meaning presidents of more recent times -- and what it will take to keep them reasonably in tow. The answer, Schlesinger believes, is a public spirit that shakes hands with the spirit of the Constitution. He then quotes the 19th-century poet Walt Whitman, who said tyranny can enter this country any time it chooses and that there is just one "bar against it," namely a "resolute breed" of us Americans. We are either vigilant, demanding rule of law, or we aren't, in which case we won't get it.
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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
01/23/13: Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
• 10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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