The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: presidency
Scholar: The Founders Created A President, Not A Monarch

Scholar: The Founders Created A President, Not A Monarch

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

In an article for The Atlanticpublished Sunday, University of Michigan law professor Julian Davis Mortenson ripped a hole in the argument made by “a great many lawyers, politicians, judges, and policy experts” who believe “executive power” is “a generic reference to monarchical authority.” According to Mortenson, those who tacitly believe the president is king — in that presidents are “given all the prerogatives of a British king, except where the Constitution specifies otherwise” — are relying on a grave misunderstanding of the nation’s founding principles.

Mortenson, who spent years researching “an enormous array of colonial, revolutionary, and founding-era sources,” describes the president-as-king claim as “utterly and totally wrong.”

“The historical record categorically refutes the idea that the American revolutionaries gave their new president an unspecified array of royal prerogatives,” writes Mortenson. “To the contrary, the presidency that leaps off the pages of the Founders’ debates, diaries, speeches, letters, poems, and essays was an instrument of the law of the land, subject to the law of the land, and both morally and legally obliged to obey the law of the land.”

As Mortenson explained, while Congress is limited to enacting laws expressly enumerated in the Constitution, “a funny thing happens … when it comes to the presidency.” Per Mortenson:

The constitutional text doesn’t actually authorize the president to do very much. It enumerates the veto, appointments, and pardon powers. It grants the president “the executive power” and the office of commander in chief. It authorizes the president to receive foreign ambassadors, demand reports from his subordinates, and deliver a State of the Union address. But aside from a few miscellaneous process authorities, that’s just about it.

Scholars who subscribe to the president-as-king theory fear a country whose leader lacks the power to “conduct diplomacy, recognize foreign governments, terminate treaties, acquire territory, fire officers and employees, or announce national policy,” Mortenson writes. To mitigate such fears, they rely on “the executive power” mentioned in Article II of the Constitution, believing it grants the president authority to act on those implied powers.

“As a historical matter, my research shows that this claim is dead wrong,” writes Mortenson. “‘The executive power’ granted at the American founding was conceptually, legally, and semantically incapable of conveying a reservoir of royal authority. The real meaning of executive power was something almost embarrassingly simple: the power to execute the law.”

On Top Of The Tiger, Trump Smells Victory

On Top Of The Tiger, Trump Smells Victory

I think it is time to face facts and imagine what life would be like under a Donald Trump presidency.

I admit the thought is terrifying.

What if he were president today and had just gotten news that a series of deadly explosions had occurred throughout Brussels, leaving at least 30 dead and more than 230 wounded, and that the Islamic State group had claimed responsibility?

“Everybody just calm down,” we could tell ourselves. “President Trump can handle this. He could have a bunch of his thugs go through the streets and beat up everybody who looks Muslim. Or else he could build a wall around Belgium. No matter what he does, however, he will show the same calm, measured, mature behavior that he showed during his election campaign.”

Now I’m getting terrified again.

Ask yourself a serious question: Could Donald Trump handle the presidency? I mean really handle it — not just wave his hands, run about, scream and shout.

Fortunately, the American people will get to decide this by casting ballots. Don’t be fooled by those countdown clocks that you see; the election has not taken place yet!

It just feels as if it has.

A couple of days ago, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Hillary Clinton whether Trump is qualified to be president.

“I think it’s important to listen to what he says,” Clinton replied. “He has been engaging in bigotry and bluster and bullying.”

And then she got really serious. “I think his incitement of violence, his constant urging on of his supporters in large numbers to go after protesters, his saying ‘I want to punch people in the face’ and telling somebody who did punch somebody ‘I will pay your legal bills’ — I think that raises very serious questions,” Clinton, who has a certain flair for understatement, said.

And Cooper asked the question that many are now asking: Sure, Trump acts like a dope on TV. Sure, he says absurd things. But isn’t that just part of his act? He’s a showman! If he were to get in the Oval Office, he would measure up to the job, wouldn’t he?

WOULDN’T HE?

“You’ve known him for a long time,” Cooper said. “Is there a different Donald Trump in there?”

(Hiding in all that hair, perhaps.)

“Who knows?” Clinton replied. “Calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, saying John McCain was not a war hero, being reluctant to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke — and the list goes on.”

Is Trump a real person or just an act? Or does he no longer know the answer to that himself?

It is said that Trump’s popularity stems from an angry nation. People are sick of government, so they are turning to dangerous clowns such as Trump as a cure.

This anger with government did not come from nowhere. Republican leaders have preached it for decades. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,'” Ronald Reagan said in speech after speech.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, became famous for saying: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” A million laughs, that guy.

The Republicans have become the party of doom and gloom. The Democrats are hoping they can sell themselves as the party of hope. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” Bill Clinton said in his first inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1993.

And you get to choose between the two parties. Really. You get to cast a ballot and everything. I think that when we get to November, it will be Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton, though there are other possibilities.

Clinton is not without her flaws. I have written about them. I think her desire for privacy has become a mania. Storing her emails as secretary of state on a private server at her home was a very serious error in judgment. But she has said: “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”

I’d like to see Trump take responsibility for his behavior when it comes to inciting violence.

This is a recent exchange between Trump and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, with Blitzer examining Trump’s suggestion that there could be riots if he were not to get the Republican nomination.

“There could very well be riots,” Trump said.

“Will you unequivocally say to your supporters you don’t want any violence — you don’t want any riots at the convention?” Blitzer said.

“Of course I would, 100 percent,” Trump said. “But I have no control over the people.”

Wait. What? So Trump takes no responsibility for his words?

“These people have been disenfranchised; they lost their jobs; they make less money now than they made 12 years ago,” Trump said. “They’re not, by nature, angry people, but I will tell you, right now they’re angry people.”

But you could say the same thing about terrorists around the world, something Trump doesn’t seem to appreciate.

The American people have “been misled by politicians for years, and they’re tired of it,” Trump went on. “And that’s why I’m doing so well, and it’s why I’m leading.”

Today Trump leads. He can smell victory from way up there on top of the tiger. But as the ancient proverb goes, “he who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.”

And once he does dismount, Hillary Clinton might make a snack out of him.

Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist. His new e-book, “Reckoning: Campaign 2012 and the Fight for the Soul of America,” can be found on Amazon.com, BN.com and iTunes. To find out more about Roger Simon and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) afternoon general session in Washington March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts      

Analysis: How Bill Clinton, Improbably, Became America’s Favorite Politician

Analysis: How Bill Clinton, Improbably, Became America’s Favorite Politician

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times

When Bill Clinton left the White House in January 2001, Americans had experienced quite enough of the boisterous Big Dog and his unending dramas, both personal and political.

Republican George W. Bush defeated Clinton’s vice president and preferred successor, fellow Democrat Al Gore, in no small part due to an enervating electoral affliction known as Clinton fatigue.

It hardly mattered that the incumbent was nowhere on the ballot. When Bush solemnly pledged to “restore honor and dignity” to the Oval Office, it was widely accepted as a not-terribly-veiled dig at the adulterous Clinton and his carryings-on with the pizza-delivering intern Monica Lewinsky.

In 1998, the Democrats had managed the rare feat of gaining congressional seats in a midterm election. But that was more a testament to Republican overreach than a tribute to the soon-to-be-impeached president.

When he wasn’t battling to stay in office, Clinton raised money for Democrats but was otherwise of little political utility — in much the same way President Barack Obama finds himself battered and belittled at this unhappy midpoint of his second term.

All of which makes it rather remarkable that today Clinton, as reviled a figure as ever served in the White House, stands as arguably the most popular political figure in America.

It’s not just his desirability to campaign for Democrats who, apart from distant fundraising assistance, want absolutely nothing to do with the current occupant of the White House. (First lady Michelle Obama, however, is still OK to visit.)

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that, alone among today’s major political figures, Clinton is seen in an overwhelmingly positive light, with 56 percent approving of the former president compared to 21 percent who disapprove.

Those handsome numbers compare to Bush’s middling 37 percent to 38 percent rating — though he, too, has been rising in the public’s estimation since leaving office — Obama’s dismal 42 percent to 46 percent rating and overall disapproval of a pair of potential 2016 Republican contestants, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, seen favorably by 23 percent and unfavorably by 27 percent of those asked, and Bush’s younger brother, Jeb, a former Florida governor, with a 22 percent favorable to 30 percent unfavorable rating.

Granted, Clinton is the most spectacularly gifted politician of his generation and the economic boom years coinciding with his time in office make him look, in the roseate rear view, all the better and more accomplished.

His globe-hopping good works, doting fatherhood and distinguished corona of white hair all give off the rarified air of a statesman and that, too, serves to enhance his stature.

But in great part the Clinton revival and continued rise in the public’s esteem speaks to the way Americans prefer their politicians, which is to say retired and no longer grasping for higher office or mucking about in partisan matters.

Look no further than Clinton’s spouse, the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state, whose poll standing has headed steadlily southward the closer she edges to her own expected bid for president in 2016.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found those interviewed were roughly split, 43 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable, in their estimation of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That so-so assessment compares to a 56 percent to 25 percent approval rating when she ended her time as secretary of State in January and 51 percent to 31 percent a year ago, before she embarked on a rocky book tour, began weighing in on developments like Ferguson, Missouri, and began other conspicuous moves toward a second try for president.

It is not just Hillary Clinton, though.

Much of the sentiment behind a third Mitt Romney try for the White House rests on his emergence in the last year or so as a kind of jolly-good-Republican, showing up to endorse GOP candidates with a gleaming smile and self-deprecating his way through interviews while disavowing any interest in another run in 2016.

That’s far different from the rough and tumble of a campaign, and it’s why people come off so much better when they’re not actually running for office. It’s like a new car, which begins losing value the instant it’s driven off the lot; the moment someone declares their desire to win office, everything they do and say is freighted with personal ambition and weighed on the scale of political calculation.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made a joint appearance this week in Washington, laughing and joshing like two old pals — Clinton actually has grown close to the Bush family in one of the more improbable post-presidential alliances — and the audience loved them for their bipartisan show of bonhomie.

All of which offers a glint of hope for the embattled incumbent hunkered down in the White House this sour election season.

In a column last spring, Yahoo‘s Matt Bai noted the kindlier light being shed these days on the second Bush presidency and suggested Obama take heart. “One day in 2022 or thereabout, he will get out of bed in Chicago or Honolulu to discover that even those who grew disillusioned now remember why they found him compelling in the first place,” Bai wrote. “There will be the inevitable chorus of, “Say what you want about Obama, but at least he wasn’t … ”

Just ask Bill Clinton, who proves there is such a thing as a sixth, seventh — or is it eighth or ninth? — act in American politics.

AFP Photo/Esther Lim

Interested in U.S. politics? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Hillary Clinton On Ferguson: ‘We Can Do Better’

Hillary Clinton On Ferguson: ‘We Can Do Better’

San Francisco (AFP) — Hillary Clinton, a potential 2016 U.S. presidential candidate, has weighed in for the first time on the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, saying America can do better.

The August 9 killing of Michael Brown, 18, and the subsequent crackdown on demonstrators in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson revived a debate about race in the United States and sparked condemnation of police tactics and militarization.

“Nobody wants to see our streets look like a war zone. Not in America. We are better than that,” Clinton said in San Francisco Thursday amid criticism for having stayed silent on the subject.

“We cannot ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system. Inequities that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality.”

As a “mother” and “human being,” the former secretary of state and first lady said her heart broke for Brown’s family “because losing a child is every parent greatest fear and an unimaginable loss.”

“But I also grieve for that community … this is what happens when the bonds of trust and respect that hold any community together fray,” she added.

Clinton, who lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, applauded the U.S. president’s decision to send Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson and for “demanding a thorough and speedy investigation.”

“We can work to rebuild the bonds of trust from the ground up,” she added.

Ferguson was hit with ten days of at times violent protests and clashes in the wake of Brown’s shooting by a white police officer, accounts of which differ.

While police allege Brown was trying to grab Wilson’s gun, witnesses said he was shot as he held his hands in the air in a clear sign of surrender.

The teenager was eulogized Monday as a victim of abusive policing at a funeral service attended by thousands, including U.S. civil rights leaders and representatives dispatched by Obama.

Clinton has remained silent so far on her presidential intentions, yet all of her actions — a series of lectures, a tour to promote her latest memoir, media appearances — appear calibrated toward a 2016 campaign.

AFP Photo/Oliver Lang

Interested in U.S. politics? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!