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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John who wrote (63537)	1/6/2012 1:18:44 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 103300

Obama’s Latest (Unconstitutional) Power Grab Is a Sign of Weakness 1/6/2012 \| John Podhoretz nation.foxnews.com President Obama’s executive power-grab this week — making four “recess” appointments when the Senate isn’t in recess — is a mark not of his strength, but of his relative weakness. He is asserting an authority he does not possess through the Constitution because he has precious little personal authority left to assert. He had it and he lost it, and he can’t figure out how to get it back — so he’s just going to take it. “When Congress refuses to act, and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them,” Obama said Wednesday as he trumpeted his installation of Richard Cordray as head of his new consumer-activism bureau. This is rhetoric designed to thrill liberals and Democrats, who (like all partisans and ideologues) love what they take to be the “good fight,” and don’t particularly care how it’s waged. That’s true even if they spent eight years screaming about supposed unconstitutional actions on the part of the Bush administration, every one of which had a far firmer foundation in constitutional law than Obama’s unprecedented action this week. They also love it because they think it represents an awakening by Obama to the nature of the obstructionist efforts against him (and a winning re-election strategy) when he says he’ll do “what I can” to combat Washington’s brokenness. This supposedly a) acknowledges the public sentiment against the city whose most powerful resident he is, b) alleges he’s not the reason for the problems and c) places the blame on the recalcitrant Congress. Maybe it’s the best hand Obama has to play, but it’s not a very good hand. For one thing, the voters who have turned on him don’t think he has exercised too little power, but rather too much — so bragging about doing things without congressional sanction may not play well. Second, no matter how resolute he sounds, the fact that he has to act in a somewhat rogue manner is an expression of a profound loss of presidential authority — and one that he can’t successfully blame on Congress. Obama lost his ability to push his agenda through Congress when he received what he himself called a “shellacking” in the November 2010 elections. That shellacking was primarily the result of massive policy overreach when he had a Democratic Congress in his pocket.