Barack Obama and the Quest for Raw Political Power

 

IBDEditorials.com

Raw Power: The White House said over the weekend that President Obama plans to bypass Congress because it won't do what he wants it to. Yet again, this president goes outside the law and acts as if he were a monarch.

The Associated Press is reporting that Obama's "top advisers warned Sunday in previewing Tuesday's State of the Union speech" that the president "will work with Congress where he can and circumvent lawmakers where he must."

White House press secretary Jay Carney is on record notifying the country that "the president sees this as a year of action to work with Congress where he can and to bypass Congress where necessary."

This has been a recurring theme of the Obama presidency.

Less than two weeks ago on these pages we noted that Obama had "vowed to bypass Congress and govern by the stroke of his pen and the bark of phone orders in place of the law."

In December we worried about "an increasingly imperial presidency that ignores the Constitution, the will of Congress, the laws sworn to be faithfully executed and the will of the people."

Last summer, we referred to the "imperial tendencies" Obama showed in making "illegal recess appointments." In the spring, we were concerned that the president's penchant for bypassing Congress with executive orders indicated that he "yearns to have the absolute power of a king."

We are not an isolated voice in this matter. In its Sunday cover story, the Christian Science Monitor asked: "Is Barack Obama an imperial president?"

"President Obama's use of executive action to get around congressional gridlock is unparalleled in modern times, some scholars say," the Monitor reported. "But to liberal activists" — naturally, we'd add — "he's not going far enough."

America does not have a royal family and is not ruled from a throne by a monarch. Our Constitution — the same one Obama is an alleged professor of, the same one the political left detests because it stands in its way of unfettered power — designed a government of three branches. None can act on its own. None can seize power over the other two.

In our brilliant system, the government is constrained by a network of checks and balances. Each branch prevents the others from tyrannizing the citizenry. The legislative branch cannot make a law without presidential approval — except in the rare event of an override. Neither can a president create a law by whim — he can only sign into law legislation that's been passed by Congress.

Meanwhile, the judicial branch cannot be involved in the creation of law, but it can stop the other branches from making laws that offend the Constitution.

When Obama makes his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, he is likely to threaten to issue executive orders in instances when Congress refuses to follow his agenda. Principled members of Congress should spend the next days and weeks challenging his usurpation of power in the court of public opinion — and in a court of law. Americans are not subjects of a king.