By David Harsanyi
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
Over the winter break I finally got around to
binge-watching “Parks and Recreation.” In case you missed the show’s seven-year
run, it’s about a fascistic, small-town councilwoman who believes it’s a
politician’s job to impose her notions of morality, safety, and decency on
everyone, no matter what voters want or what the system dictates. She is
justifiably recalled by the people of her town after attempting to regulate
portion sizes at fast food restaurants, but ends up running a federal office
where she can do big things without the consent of the people.
Now, I realize that most of the show’s fans see the
narrative in a vastly different light and the protagonist, Leslie Knope, as the
sort of idealist, compassionate, and principled politician Americans should
love. “Parks and Rec” can be fantastically funny (and it has a big heart), but
as I watched I was often reminded that many people glorify ideas like “public
service” — a preposterous term that treats politics as if it were a sacrifice
without pay, power, or prestige — and “doing something” as a moral imperative
no matter how politicians get it done.
When I got back from my winter vacation, America was
still being run by a two-term president who believes it’s his job to impose his
notions of morality, safety, and decency on everyone, often trying to work
around the limits the system places on him. This week Barack Obama is going to
institute new restrictions on Americans unilaterally — expanding background
checks, closing supposed “loopholes,” and tightening the process for
law-abiding gun owners — because Congress “won’t act” and also because he
believes it’s the right thing to do. Neither of them are compelling reasons to
legislate from the White House.
Perhaps no post-World War II president (and maybe none
before) has justified his executive overreach by openly contending he was working around the law-making branch of
government because it has refused to do what he desired. Whether a court finds
his actions constitutional or not, it’s an argument that stands, at the very
least, against the spirit American governance. Today, many liberals call this
“leadership.”
The most likely result of his new gun push will be that
hundreds of thousands of Americans who understandably fear the mission creep of
government will end up buying a whole bunch of guns (Smith & Wesson and
Sturm, Ruger & Co. stocks rose against the dipping market on Monday). The
flow of donations to Second Amendment advocacy groups will almost certainly
rise, and gun violence — which has fallen considerably over the past 20 years
of gun ownership expansion — will not be addressed.
But more consequentially — and this may be the most
destructive legacy of the Obama presidency — is the mainstreaming of the idea
that if Congress “fails to act” it’s okay for the president to figure out a way
to make law himself. Hillary’s already applauded Obama’s actions because, as
she put it, “Congress won’t act; we have to do something.” This idea is
repeated perpetually by the Left, in effect arguing that we live in direct
democracy run by the president (until a Republican is in office, of course). On
immigration, on global warming, on Iran, on whatever crusade liberals are on,
the president has a moral obligation to act if Congress doesn’t do what he
wants.
To believe this, you’d have to accept two things: 1) That
Congress has a responsibility to pass laws on the issues that the president
desires or else they would be abdicating their responsibility, and 2) That
Congress has not already acted.
In 2013, the Senate rejected legislation to expand
background checks for gun purchases and to ban certain weapons and ammunition,
and they would almost certainly oppose nearly every idea Obama has to curb gun
ownership today. Congress has acted, just not in the manner Obama desires.
“Change, as always, is going to take all of us,” Obama
theorized the other day. “The gun lobby is loud and well organized in its
defense of effortlessly available guns for anyone. The rest of us are going to
have to be just as passionate and well organized in our defense of our kids.
That’s the work of citizenship — to stand up and fight for the change that we
seek.”
Get it? You can be with the loud and reprehensible gun
lobby who supports allowing criminals to obtain guns “effortlessly,” or you can
stand with the kids. Your choice!
Well, not exactly your choice. As a reactionary, I wonder
is it really the duty of “citizenship” to cheer on a president who
single-handedly constrains Americans from practicing one of their
constitutional rights? If President Bush had instituted a series of
restrictions on the abortion industry — since it has a loud, well-organized,
and well-funded lobby that wants to make abortions “effortlessly” available —
without congressional input, would that have been procedurally okay with
liberals? You know, for the children? I don’t imagine so.
Or is it okay this time because the president claims (and
many in the media ape) that his initiatives will “combat gun violence in the
U.S.?” Is the threat of violence enough to empower the executive branch to
place strictures on rights clearly laid out in the Constitution without any
debate? Does the same go for fighting terrorism when a Republican becomes
president?
The truth is, Obama has attempted to govern without
Congress ever since Democrats rammed the Affordable Care Act through. It was
the first time any consequential reform was instituted by a single political
party, poisoning any chance of building consensus on major legislation in the
foreseeable future. Since then, Republicans have frustrated Democrats, and on
nearly every issue that matters to Obama. Obama has gone as far as he can, and
sometimes farther, to administer law through our loudest, largest, most powerful,
and well-funded bureaucracies.
A lot of people justify this behavior for the most
obvious reason: they don’t care about process; they only care about issues.
It’s true that the upside of executive orders and actions is that they can be
easily undone when a new president is elected. But with the intractability of
both parties only becoming more pronounced, the temptation to use the Obama
model of legislating through the executive branch will become increasingly
attractive to politicians and their supporters.
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