My new book, “The Brief Against Obama: The Rise, Fall & Epic Fail of the Hope & Change Presidency,” already needs a second edition so I can expand the chapter on President Obama’s abuse of his office. If the president declares that his new immigration enforcement priority is octogenarian Estonians who entered the country without documents in the ’40s, can he thereby unilaterally direct all other enforcement of the naturalization laws of the United States be suspended until all those scoundrels are rounded up?
If the president declares that justice requires that cosmetic surgeries in Los Angeles are necessary for his vision of the good life, can he unilaterally direct his Department of Health and Human Services to oblige all insurance-providing employers in California to require that benefit as part of the standard health insurance package?
If the president no longer cares to defend the federal laws criminalizing marijuana or any other drug, can he direct his Department of Justice to cease the defense of those laws in the federal courts of the United States?
The president’s Friday edict on immigrants in the country illegally but brought here as children by others over the past decade and a half; his command regarding Catholic institutions and the morning-after pill; and the wave of his hand on the Defense of Marriage Act — all of these acts and many more claim for the president a breathtaking unilateral authority over matters quite obviously within the shared control of the Congress and the executive.
There is no limiting principle curbing the president’s unilateralism once exercised and unrebuked by Congress or the courts.
Defenders of the president’s many decrees cite President George W. Bush’s conduct of the war on terror as grounds for an expansive interpretation of executive authority, but they forget not only the Constitution’s assignment of commander-in-chief authority to the president but also the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution from the fall of 2001. Bush acted pursuant to the Constitution’s design and congressional authorization, not against it or without it, as is the case with President Obama.
Arthur Schlesinger wrote “The Imperial Presidency” in 1973. Forty years later, we realize he was decrying a piker by comparison with Obama.
Gov. Mitt Romney was right to note that the cases of young people brought here illegally and raised here for years and years present situations calling out for generous treatment and grace.
The working out of that treatment, however, is a complicated business with many subcategories of claims and circumstances, and Congress should be in the driver’s seat. Sen. Marco Rubio is leading that effort — or was, rather, until the president usurped the congressional authority, thus making comprehensive progress this year all but impossible.
The president’s recklessness with regard to his understanding of his powers is growing in inverse proportion to his standing in the polls. As he falls farther and faster, and as crack-ups pile up, from “the private sector is doing fine” to his mistake-by-the-lake speech in Cleveland, he reaches wildly for any handle on which to hold and any special interest to which goodies can be delivered.
Same-sex marriage? You bet. The Dream Act? Why not? Recess appointees when the Senate isn’t in recess? But of course.
A desperate and angry president can’t even handle a boorish reporter without visible pique? Whatever happened to the maxim that the essence of good taste is never to be offended by bad taste?
Not with this president, not in this bunker, not during this campaign or, God forbid, after his re-election.
The Manhattan-Beltway media elites like the politics and the confrontations, as they are easy to film and drone on about.
Historians, though, will wonder, where were the grown-ups in the Fourth Estate who ought to have named and, if not condemned, at least noted an executive power on steroids, with all the irascibility and rage that such abuse brings?
Hugh Hewitt is a professor at Chapman University School of Law, a national radio talk show host, and author of The Brief Against Obama: The Rise, Fall and Epic Fail of the Hope and Change Presidency. Follow him on Twitter at @hughhewitt
