Our President Shows Off His Scholarity with Much Unintentional Hilarity
Jimmie | April 3, 2012 | Comments (2)
 Has anyone mentioned lately that our President, Barack Obama, is a constitutional scholar? I ask because he didn’t seem to have a very good grip on matters Constitutional yesterday when asked about the possibility that the Supreme Court might overturn his signature piece of legislation.
I want to give you his full answer as recorded by Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times. It’s long, so I’ll jump in once in a while with a little commentary of my own just to break the seemingly endless stream of Constitutional scholarity.
“I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, it’s constitutional.
“That’s not just my opinion by the way. That’s the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum, including two very conservative appellate court justices that said this wasn’t even a close case.”
Oh, so if some legal experts agree with you, and a couple of them happen to be members of a party not your own (even if one of them voted for you and you named the other one Ambassador to Malta), your law is constitutional? We don’t need to consult the actual Constitution or anything else written on the subject by the guys who wrote the Constitution? Well, that does make things handy. The converse, of course, would mean that if we conservatives could find a couple left-wing legal experts who believed Roe v. Wade was wrongly-decided, then we could get it overturned. Do you think the President really wants that to be the standard?
No. Neither do I.
The bigger problem with his opinion is that he’s not really offering a learned legal opinion as befits a former Harvard Law Review President and constitutional scholar. His answer, basically, boils down to “It’s constitutional, because shut up, that’s why”. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that ipse dixit would get you laughed out of every courtroom on the planet.
“I think it’s important — because I watched some of the commentary last week — to remind people that this is not an abstract argument. People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of healthcare, the inaffordability of healthcare, their inability to get healthcare because of preexisting conditions.
“The law that’s already in place has already given 2.5 million young people healthcare that wouldn’t otherwise have it. There are tens of thousands of adults with preexisting conditions who have healthcare right now because of this law. Parents don’t have to worry about their children not being able to get healthcare because they can’t be prevented from getting healthcare as a consequence of a preexisting condition. That is part of this law.
“Millions of seniors are paying less for prescription drugs because of this law. Americans all across the country have greater rights and protections with respect to the insurance companies, and are getting preventive care because of this law.
“So, that’s just the part that’s already been implemented. That doesn’t speak to the 30 million people who stand to gain coverage once it’s fully implemented in 2014.
Pardon my cruel conservative heart here, but so what? Not everything that is good is constitutional. I’m sure we’d all be better off if police could simply yank people off the street and search them for open warrants, drugs, or weapons. They can’t. You could make one whale of a case that America would be much improved if you outlawed pornography or Nicki Minaj albums. That’s a no-no, too.
See, here’s the thing about the Constitution that the President does not understand. Our Founders were far less concerned about forcing people into subjection to bring about some nebulous “greater good” than they were in making darned sure the government didn’t drag the rights of the individual into an alley and curb-stomp them to death.
The President’s litany of good things Obamacare had allegedly brought (and don’t for a second believe it didn’t bring a truck-load of bad things as well) doesn’t matter where the Constitution is concerned. When the First Amendment, for example, says “Congress shall make no law…”, there is no parenthetical exception that says “…unless it’s for a really good reason, in which case Congress can make any law it wants”.
“And I think it’s important, I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get healthcare.
“So there’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this but there’s a human element to this, and I hope that’s not forgotten in this political debate.
That thing he said about the mechanism? It’s a flat-out lie. There are several ways to get less expensive health care for that minuscule percentage of people that don’t involve our government dragooning the rest of us into a health insurance system we don’t want. As I wrote last week, the Democrats and Barack Obama did everything in their power to make sure we didn’t hear about those other ways. He’s doing the very same thing here. This is a version of his “some say [crazy impossible thing that no one could ever say] but I say [crazy left-wing twaddle that doesn't sound quite so crazy when compared to the previous crazy thing]” rhetorical device he’s used in approximately every single speech he’s given for the past three years. It was fallacious the first time he did it and it’s fallacious now.
“Ultimately I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.
Ooo! Okay, here’s a game I know how to play! Let’s see if I do as well as the President.
“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law in the case of Marbury v. Madison that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.”
Wait. Maybe I can do better than that.
“I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, namely the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, it’s constitutional. “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.”
How’d I do? Did I sound just like President Obama there?
Again, I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m absolutely sure that it would be neither unprecedented nor extraordinary for the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare. In fact, from 1981 to 2005, the SCOTUS has overturned 53 Federal statutes. That’s an awful lot of overturning and I strongly suspect it shows that if the SCOTUS overturned Obamacare, it would be rather ordinary and precedented.
“And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.”
Isn’t it funny that the President decried “judicial activism” yesterday when just five years ago, he clamored for that very “activism” in the partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Carhart? I’ll note here that the law he wanted overturned back then passed both houses of Congress with 2/3 majorities, which I”m pretty sure qualifies it as “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress”. In fact, that law passed with far larger majorities than did Obamacare.
After this answer, the President took a follow-up question. What he said was basically a reprise of the very beginning of his original answer, but it’s more clear and, if the GOP has any sense at all, should be in a campaign commercial tomorrow.
“I’m confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld. And again, that’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who’ve examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.”
Behold, the mighty reasoning power of a constitutional scholar! The SCOTUS should uphold the law because it should uphold the law. How can you possibly argue with that? Well, you can’t, for the same reason you can’t argue with a child who believes that smearing poo on a wall is the height of artistic expression. There is no arguing with a mind slammed shut and bolted tight against reason.
You know, I’m actually glad I’m not a constitutional scholar. If Barack Obama is the gold standard for that profession, the standards can’t be all that hig |
