Jonathan Turley is a great man and I very much admire him. He is an idealist in a world gone mad with cynicism. Even when I disagree with him, I see his point. And mostly, I do agree with him. And that brings us to his op-ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, The President’s Power Grab.
Turley’s position is that we are at a tipping point with regard to what he calls the uber presidency. Far beyond the unitary executive, the idea of the uber presidency is that the executive branch is taking over powers that are rightly the purview of the legislative branch. In general terms, I’m right with him: the president is far more powerful than is envisioned by the Constitution. But “tipping point”? I don’t think so.
We have gotten to this point quite gradually over the last 225 years come this 30 April when George Washington became the first President of the United States of America. I was particularly aware of this happening during the presidency of George Bush the Younger. (Not because he was the first, but just because I hadn’t been paying attention before that.) And I would say to myself, “Hopefully, a Democrat will become president and reverse all of this!” And then I would laugh and laugh at my little joke. I’m far too cynical to think that this kind of stuff ever reverses itself. I know of no president who ever willingly gave up power.
It is hard to say exactly where Turley is coming from in all of this. He lists seven examples of President Obama’s executive over-reach, each one of which is entirely underwhelming. One of them is: “The administration ordered all US attorneys to stop prosecuting nonviolent drug crime defendants who would be subject to what Atty Gen Eric H Holder Jr called draconian mandatory minimum sentences.” That seems to fall completely under the authority of the executive branch, which gets to decide how it wants to utilize its prosecutorial resources. And Turley must know this because after his list, he writes, “Some of these changes are admittedly close questions, and federal agencies are given considerable discretion in crafting regulations.” Right! So what’s the problem?
In the end, Turley’s problem isn’t with Obama or Bush or any president. It is given that these men are going to abuse their powers. The problem is with Congress, who he thinks should be fighting a turf war. But there are problems. First is that these are not such great examples of executive over-reach. I’m much more concerned with the practice of slicing and dicing legislation with executive signing statements—a practice that while nothing as extreme as under Bush the Younger, is still going on. The second, and more important issue is that Republicans are a bunch of authoritarians who want some kind of dictator. So they are never going to be against the uber presidency. And as long a Democrat is in the White House, the Congressional Democrats aren’t going to fuss. The one thing that unites Democrats is their fear that a Republican will get in the White House.
Regardless of all this, the truth is that we are at no tipping point. The situation simply gets worse and worse every year. And it will continue on that way until the entire American Empire collapses under its own weight. In the end, there are far bigger things to worry about than the fact that Obama is circumventing the No Child Left Behind Act with waivers. Jonathan Turley is coming off like a pedantic schoolboy.
