Gyroscopic Investing

This month, I spoke at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal with some of its survivors at the National Press Club. While much of the discussion looked back at the historic clash with President Nixon, I was struck by a different question: Who actually won? From unilateral military actions to warrantless surveillance that were key parts of the basis for Nixon's impending impeachment, the painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.

Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an "imperial presidency" with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:

MediumTex wrote: Imagine if Nixon had received a Nobel Peace Prize.

craigr wrote:

MediumTex wrote: Imagine if Nixon had received a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet I always remind myself that the power Obama is using today was ratcheted in through decades of hard work on the part of control freaks from both parties. Obama is simply pulling levers that Bush II gave him, etc.. Of course when Bush II was doing it, the GOP didn't mind.

Benko wrote: You can argue that what Obama has done is an extension of what has been done previously, but with respect you cannot say that what Obama has done is nothing more than what has been done previously:

1. Obamas freezing out nearly all mainstream media coverage
2. Obama didn't like the work requirement for welfare  so he changed it.
3.  Forget details but there is something having to do with immigration and children that he didn't like (or couldn't get approved through congress) so he changed it.

I am not fond of and would have not have liked e.g. Hillary as president, but Obama has done more and gotten away with more than other liberals or republican predecessors.

RuralEngineer wrote: To Ad Orientem:

And other than not passing a budget, I think these are violations of law.  To Benko's point about the modification of the "Work" definition in the Welfare reform legislation, I'm not under the impression that the President has the ability to modify Legislation by executive order, are you?  I consider that a violation of law.  Changing what constitutes "work" with respect to Welfare is no different that changing what constitutes "obscene" with respect to freedom of expression.  The President doesn't get to make those calls, he's not a legislator.

Ad Orientem wrote:

RuralEngineer wrote: To Ad Orientem:

And other than not passing a budget, I think these are violations of law.  To Benko's point about the modification of the "Work" definition in the Welfare reform legislation, I'm not under the impression that the President has the ability to modify Legislation by executive order, are you?  I consider that a violation of law.  Changing what constitutes "work" with respect to Welfare is no different that changing what constitutes "obscene" with respect to freedom of expression.  The President doesn't get to make those calls, he's not a legislator.

George Bush did it all the time. He issued scores of so called "Signing Statements" to legislation in which he outlined his "interpretation" or areas of disagreement with the law and announced his right to ignore those aspects of the law. So yea BO is basically just Bush's third term as president.

IN MATTERS of foreign policy, Congress, and especially the Senate, was designed as a hedge against the abuses exhibited by overeager European monarchs who for centuries had whimsically entangled their countries in misguided adventures. America would not be such a place. The Constitution would protect our governmental process from the overreach of a single executive who might otherwise succumb to the impulsive temptation to unilaterally risk our country’s blood, treasure and international prestige. Congress was given the power to declare war and appropriate funds, thus eliminating any resemblance to European-style monarchies when it came to the presidential war power.

Importantly and often forgotten these days, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was also carefully drawn to give Congress, not the president, certain powers over the structure and use of the military. True, the president would act as commander in chief, but only in the sense that he would be executing policies shepherded within the boundaries of legislative powers. In some cases his power is narrowed further by the requirement that he obtain the “Advice and Consent”? of two-thirds of the Senate. Congress, not the president, would “raise and support Armies,”? with the Constitution limiting appropriations for such armies to no more than two years. This was a clear signal that in our new country there would be no standing army to be sent off on foreign adventures at the whim of a pseudomonarch. The United States would not engage in unchecked, perpetual military campaigns.

rocketdog wrote: His legacy awaits:

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

MediumTex wrote:

rocketdog wrote: His legacy awaits:

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

How does George W. Bush rank in relation to Obama and Nixon?

IMHO, all three are awful from a Constitutional perspective, but I'm not sure which of the three I would say is the worst.

MediumTex wrote:

rocketdog wrote: His legacy awaits:

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

How does George W. Bush rank in relation to Obama and Nixon?

rocketdog wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

rocketdog wrote: His legacy awaits:

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

How does George W. Bush rank in relation to Obama and Nixon?

Bush vs. Nixon: battle for ‘worst ever’

Pointedstick wrote: If I had to guess, probably prodding the USA into a European regional conflict, escalating it into a global war, and then using it as an excuse to destabilize the region by shoving democracy down the throats of the losers.

Ad Orientem wrote: I detest Wilson for the same reasons that most of the liberal weenies love him (and a few others on the side). Woodrow Wilson was a self absorbed man with a messianic complex that in any ordinary person would have caused others to question his mental faculties. He was so absolutely convinced that he knew what the world needed that he dragged the United States into a war we had no business being in and got a quarter of a million Americans killed or wounded. In the process of arbitrarily creating the new world order according to his own judgments after the war, he was the prime instigator in dismantling most of Europe’s old order and replacing it with a hodge podge of states that had little cohesion and no real foundation. As just one example, the perpetual crisis in the Balkans in the 90’s is a direct consequence of the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had maintained a semblance of order among its vast and diverse populace. The Second World War is something which must at least in part be laid at Wilson’s feet. Had we stayed out of the First World War it would have ended with a German victory (distasteful, but again none of our business) and the complete catastrophe of the treaty of Versailles would most likely have been avoided.

Wilson was a bigot who quickly broke his campaign pledge on taking office and issued an executive order segregating the civil service on racial lines. His cabinet was packed by men who were either members of the Klan or openly sympathetic to its aims. During the war he exercised powers that Lincoln could only have dreamed of and sharply curtailed freedom of speech and the press. He jailed any who dared to criticize his administration or the war. Wilson’s obsessions with the war also lead directly to the suppression of most serious efforts to deal with the crisis of the influenza pandemic in the Fall of 1918. This lead to the deaths of more than 700,000 Americans, more than three times as many as were killed by the Kaiser's army.

And finally on a very petty point of peevishness I note that it was Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, an outspoken white supremacist and puritanical Methodist (yes there were such things at one time), who on taking office in 1913 swiftly moved to abolish the immemorial custom of the daily ration of rum for all enlisted men in the Navy. Mr. Daniels was one of the movers and shakers behind what would eventually become Prohibition. To this day all Navy ships are dry and remain the last vestige of Federally enforced prohibition.

rocketdog wrote:
Well, okay, but tell us how you really feel.

Ad Orientem wrote: I detest Wilson for the same reasons that most of the liberal weenies love him (and a few others on the side). Woodrow Wilson was a self absorbed man with a messianic complex that in any ordinary person would have caused others to question his mental faculties. He was so absolutely convinced that he knew what the world needed that he dragged the United States into a war we had no business being in and got a quarter of a million Americans killed or wounded. In the process of arbitrarily creating the new world order according to his own judgments after the war, he was the prime instigator in dismantling most of Europe’s old order and replacing it with a hodge podge of states that had little cohesion and no real foundation. As just one example, the perpetual crisis in the Balkans in the 90’s is a direct consequence of the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had maintained a semblance of order among its vast and diverse populace. The Second World War is something which must at least in part be laid at Wilson’s feet. Had we stayed out of the First World War it would have ended with a German victory (distasteful, but again none of our business) and the complete catastrophe of the treaty of Versailles would most likely have been avoided.

Wilson was a bigot who quickly broke his campaign pledge on taking office and issued an executive order segregating the civil service on racial lines. His cabinet was packed by men who were either members of the Klan or openly sympathetic to its aims. During the war he exercised powers that Lincoln could only have dreamed of and sharply curtailed freedom of speech and the press. He jailed any who dared to criticize his administration or the war. Wilson’s obsessions with the war also lead directly to the suppression of most serious efforts to deal with the crisis of the influenza pandemic in the Fall of 1918. This lead to the deaths of more than 700,000 Americans, more than three times as many as were killed by the Kaiser's army.

And finally on a very petty point of peevishness I note that it was Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, an outspoken white supremacist and puritanical Methodist (yes there were such things at one time), who on taking office in 1913 swiftly moved to abolish the immemorial custom of the daily ration of rum for all enlisted men in the Navy. Mr. Daniels was one of the movers and shakers behind what would eventually become Prohibition. To this day all Navy ships are dry and remain the last vestige of Federally enforced prohibition.