Un-American? No, just wrong
No one was surprised when Judge Andrew Napolitano, the former Fox News analyst, recently criticized President Obama for his uninhibited use of executive orders to bypass Congress and advance his agenda.
After all, Napolitano is a conservative Republican and President Obama is a straight-ahead liberal Democrat.
But something happened this week that makes us think perhaps more people should start paying attention to the president’s ambitious legacy-building approach to his final years in office.
This time, it wasn’t a conservative Republican who called out the president for violating the Constitution, but a longtime liberal journalist who has been called the conscience of civil libertarianism. Nat Hentoff, who wrote for the Village Voice for more than 50 years, says that Obama is “the most un-American president we’ve ever had.”
He bases that on the president’s use of executive authority, which Hentoff considers a dangerous violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers, but perhaps he is wrong that such an over-reach is un-American. Doesn’t it seem like every president for the past 50 or 100 years has been pushing in this direction? Obama may have gone further than any other president in ignoring the will of Congress, but he didn’t invent the idea.
Still, it was disconcerting to hear the president tell his Cabinet last week that he didn’t need to wait for Congress to pass legislation to get the economy moving.
“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”
Well any two-bit dictator can make the same claim, but what separates President Obama from Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro is that the United States has a Constitution that is supposed to protect “we the people” from the unbridled power of a strongman, no matter how well-intentioned.
We don’t expect President Obama has to worry about Hentoff’s declaration that it is time to look into impeachment proceedings against the president, but maybe he should have to worry a little bit more about what average Americans say.
We don’t think anyone in America — Democrat or Republican — wants a dictator, so let’s insist on following the law — and the Constitution — whether it is convenient to partisan agendas or not.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.