FOD 2013.08.19

George Will has been commenting on the antics of our elected 'leaders' for over 40 years now. He is articulate, insightful, and IMHO generally spot-on. What many people forget is that, although of conservative (if not libertarian) leanings, he made his bones excoriating Nixon for that president's crimes and deceit.

In a recent column, Will compares and contrasts Nixon's aberrant treatment of the Constitution with obama's campaign to emasculate it.

President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.

Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”

The case in point is obama's announcement that he would delay enforcement of the requirement that all employers with more than 50 employees provide coverage to their workers from 2014 to 2015. That, however, is merely the latest symptom of obama's penchant for riding roughshod over the Constitution. In the context of obamacare alone, "the Obama administration had missed as many as one-third of the deadlines, specified by law, under the Affordable Care Act."

First, there was the delay of Obamacare’s Medicare cuts until after the election. Then there was the delay of the law’s employer mandate. Then there was the announcement, buried in the Federal Register, that the administration would delay enforcement of a number of key eligibility requirements for the law’s health insurance subsidies, relying on the “honor system” instead. Now comes word that another costly provision of the health law—its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs—will be delayed for one more year.

Sadly, such Constitutional neglect has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media - the same group that hounded Nixon from office for similar behavior.

Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?”

In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked: “Would you say that there are certain situations ... where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation ... and do something illegal?”

Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

That is a truly frightening statement. It reveals the mind of an individual who holds himself above the law. It was wrong when Nixon did it, and it's wrong now.

Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA. Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law pertaining to any subject at any time when the political “environment” is difficult.

Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written.

I think by now it's clear that obama cannot be embarrassed. If he won't hide his head in shame from the debacle that is obamacare, why should we expect him to be embarrassed by Fast and Furious ... or Benghazi ... or the IRS scandal ... or spying on the Associated Press ... or using the NSA to spy on everyone else ... or anything?