By Mona Charen
Friday, November 21, 2014
‘I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will
faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will, to
the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States.”
President Obama twice pronounced those words. On the
first occasion, Chief Justice Roberts erred slightly in the wording. So mindful
was President Obama of the importance of complying with the letter of the law
that he arranged for Roberts to administer the oath again the following day.
The second time, both spoke the words verbatim.
Process matters. The law matters. President Obama knows
this. He has repeatedly explained to impatient illegal immigrants that he
cannot waive deportation for an entire category of people with the stroke of a
pen. “I’m not the emperor of the United States,” he said in early 2013. “My job
is to execute laws that are passed. And Congress right now has not changed what
I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we
have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think
that in many cases the results may be tragic.”
The president’s now abandoned reluctance to make law by
executive fiat on immigration was the one realm in which he showed some
deference to the constitutional order. He felt no such scruples on the dozens
of occasions when he airily rewrote the Affordable Care Act — postponing
deadlines that were found in the text of the law, offering exemptions to
favored businesses, and suspending the employer mandate, the individual
mandate, and various other provisions. The health-care law is now so perverted
from its original form (not that the original was a thing of beauty) that it
isn’t so much a law as a series of decrees from the Most High Leader. If he
wakes up tomorrow morning and decides that the employer mandate should wait
until 2018, that, apparently, will be that.
This, as the former constitutional-law professor in the
White House has said, “is not the way our system is supposed to work.”
He showed no fealty to the law when he dictated terms to
the auto industry in violation of bankruptcy law; when he failed to obtain
congressional approval for military action in Libya; when he made “recess”
appointments to the National Labor Relations Board though the Congress was not
in recess; when he waived the work requirements of the welfare laws; or when he
declined to enforce federal laws on marijuana.
We can speculate about why President Obama is so
disrespectful of the Constitution, the law, and the voters. We can imagine that
this latest arrogation is impeachment bait — hoping to draw Republicans into a
fight that will unite the Democratic base and divide Republicans. Or perhaps he
knows that as the first black president, he’s immune from impeachment and is
putting a finger in Republicans’ (and voters’) eyes because he can.
Progressives have tamely accepted and even cheered each
and every usurpation by this president. The center-left think tank Brookings,
for example, offered analysis of the merits of changing immigration law with
barely a nod to the method. Calling the president’s plan “big” and “bold,”
Audrey Singer described it as a “step in the right direction.”
“Bold” is one way to put it. Flagrantly flouting the law
is another. Yet there has been barely a murmur from Democrats. This is one of
the great divides between Right and Left. Conservatives care deeply about
process, while progressives care only about outcomes. If they can achieve their
goals through legislation, they will. If not, they will look to the courts or
the federal agencies to implement their preferred policies. However vehemently
conservatives oppose abortion, for example, they can accept it if
democratically enacted. What is unacceptable is judicial imposition.
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