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I'm just a bill... yes I'm only a bill... and I'm sittin' here on Capitol Hill...
I've been playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village lately, so maybe I'm just seeing things from a puzzle point of view, but there's a quote in the New York Times that I've been scratching my head over.
“The only votes that come up are votes that are purposely designed to divide people. It’s true that if I’m presented with a series of votes like that, I’m more likely to fall left of center than right of center. But as president, I would be setting the terms of debate.”
This is a comment from Barack Obama, talking about how the Republicans have been running things, and how things would be different if he were president.
It's a great comment. Very inspiring and hopeful. And it would be completely true if he were the Prime Minister of Canada.
But he's not.
And it's not.
The President of the United States neither introduces bills nor makes laws. The President is a powerful figurehead and certainly influences policy, but the job is to be, pardon the cliche, the 'commander and chief': he -- I use the male pronoun because there has not yet been a female president -- is the head of the US military and upholder of American law. The President is the leader of the Executive Branch of government, which makes policy to enforce existing laws, which are made by Congress. The president has no right to force Congress to debate things in a certain way. In fact, when it comes to the passage of laws, the president has a very stark choice: to veto, or not to veto. Voting 'present' isn't an option.
So what's Obama going on about with this setting debate terms messhugas?
As a civil rights lawyer (Judicial Branch) and a legislator (Legislative Branch) I think Obama knows how the American government works. Unfortunately, MOST Americans don't know how their government works, which allows them to be swayed by nonsensical, impossible statements made by politicians. Americans are aware of their myths far more than their history, and a good example of this -- yes, I'm fully aware of the minefield I'm stepping into by bringing this one up -- is the Emancipation Proclamation.
Most Americans think of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as the President of the United States, ol' Honest Abe, making slavery illegal. But that's not at all what it was. The Emancipation Proclamation was, in fact, an executive order, made by the President as the head of the American Military in a time of war. Slavery wasn't officially made illegal until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, a legislative act of CONGRESS, not the President. There ha been a great deal of debate among historians about the actual legality of the Emancipation Proclamation, but all of that is all legally moot, because of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Since then, executive orders which attempt to make laws instead of interpreting them have been overturned, albeit it extremely rarely. Only twice, in fact. One happened when Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry. The other happened to an executive order issued by... drumroll... Bill Clinton.
This might be why Hillary's approach to government is more 'cynical' and 'skeptical'. These symptoms of experience and practicality have become poo poo words as America struggles to pull hope out of numerous economic crises and a war that hasn't turned out like the 'shock and awe' victory they were hoping for.
To put these varying viewpoints in perspective, allow me to make a mundane analogy. I've seen a lot of would-be television professionals come out of the colleges with a ton of theory and ideology and enthusiasm. They want to be directing after a week on the job, because they think their singular vision and charisma will be the vanguard of a television revolution. They'll 'change the way television is made'!
Of course, they usually just end up getting fired. Meanwhile cynical, skeptical me keeps on making small changes within the scope of my power and influence, over a slow and painful process of many many seasons of shows. I made the same mistakes when I was twenty years old and just starting in the executive branch of television. I'm still trying to live some of them down. But I learned that to change things, one must work with the flawed and brittle system, as opposed to attempting to abolish it.
Yes, you can make revolutionary changes in individual programs, and do some really fantastic things, but change the entire process of television? There're hundreds of network execs managing the system. That like the way things work. And who are more likely to tell you to kiss their asses than listen to your ideas on remaking the entire process, because their networks will bleed money while some douchebag is trying to reinvent the wheel. So we get procedural dramas and reality tv, but the BUSINESS of television, the inner workings, still progress the same way they have since I Love Lucy was on the air.
So one could claim that simple inexperience led Obama to make his evanescent, enthusiastic declaration that he'll change the way Congress works. But this isn't the only possible motivation for Obama's statement, and isn't the one I subscribe to, since that's absolutely inexcusable ignorance and I think he's a smart guy.
He could have simply gotten carried away. He could have been outright lying. Or he might have simply misspoke and needs to refine his message. Although I don't know about that last suggestion, since he's been claiming that he can change the way Washington is run throughout his campaign.
You may believe that Obama believes he can change Washington. You may believe he's even going to try. But if you think that he and his compatriots can override hundreds of years of tradition, legalities, and constitutional boundaries, you're pissing in the ear of every president from George Washington to George W. Bush, and trying to tell them it's raining.
And you're encouraging the candidate you're backing to do something that is essentially illegal, since it's a violation of executive privilege and free speech.
I absolutely agree with Obama that partisanship is out of control. Unfortunately, "we're going to do things my way now" is just an extreme form of partisanship. Equally unfortunately, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain, ESPECIALLY John McCain, have much longer resumes of bi-partisanship and non-partisanship. In fact, McCain co-sponsored a bill that actually became the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001. The man he co-sponsored the bill with was Russell Feingold, a Democrat, hence the... yeah... 'Bipartisan' part. This alienated McCain rather severely from the Republicans before primary voters decided they'd had enough of the hard Right. The McCain-Feingold bill divided people, all right, but along money trails, not party lines.
Unfortunately, words seem to speak louder than actions in politics, and this election cycle is just politics as usual. But it's not the first time I've read some comment about government that makes my head threaten to explode from the sheer nonsense of it, and these very smart, very educated people wouldn't make these statements if they didn't think they'd get them somewhere.
It's up to American voters to understand how their government works so that they aren't swayed by nonsensical rhetoric. Someone needs to bring back Schoolhouse Rock or something.
(EDIT: Immediately after writing this blog, I discovered that a third ruling against an executive order issued by a president was overruled by the Supreme Court TODAY. President Bush was found to have had no power to tell the State of Texas to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for the murder and rape of two teenaged girls. The ruling quoted language from the 1952 ruling against Truman.)
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