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• Tuesday, January 13, 2009 07:56 PM

  While too often unheeded, Article I remains first among equals

  That is, quoting bernbart [turnabout's fair play...]:

  I agree with [moon6pence] on one point. No one man can do this. The real power lies with Congress. Obama provides the leadership and direction (missing in the Bush administration), but it is Congress that has the power to make change. The question is will the Democrats in Congress screw this up. Democrats have the power to make change now, but will they do it?

  -- bernbart

  "The real power lies with Congress."

  If and when Members choose to use it. If and when we insist they do.

  Because:

  Nevertheless, the near-unanimous pro-Israel chorus in Congress demonstrates who is really running the show, and how thoroughly, in this country. So observers may want to reconsider where the real, not apparent, power resides. -- moon6pence on Page 1

  Otherwise, vigorous debate among equals in Congress will be further marginalized:

  I find it disturbing that people place all their naive hopes for re-shaping all national policies, from foreign to domestic, on one man. - -- moon6pence

  A comment from steven andresen captures both the healthy, democratic process that public debate enables, and a perhaps-unconscious acceptance (if only to resist its implications) of the unhealthy role reversal between our federal legislature and executive, that bernbart also noted (which presumes that the president should direct the legislature into action, rather than the reverse):

  But, in order to understand what we'd like our representatives to do for us, we [and they] should argue about, chat over, and generally debate, all the aspects of what we need, or want, and how best to get those things done.

  Armed with a fair to middlin understanding of what our direction should be, inevitably, we should be able to tell when our leaders are not doing what we think they should be. So, when Obama isn't doing what he's supposed to be, we have to tell him. We have to argue for what we think is in our best interests. For someone to say that we ought not give him such direction is surely undemocratic from a very deep level. -- steven andresen

  The fact is, Obama, as president, should always be "doing what he's supposed to be" doing, according to the mandates of the Constitution and Congress. It's Article I's Congress that has the prerogative and the responsibility to enact policies into law, to criminalize behavior, to initiate hostilities abroad, etc.

  Though all-too-easy, tempting, and widespread today (and very definitely modeled by Obama himself), this implicit idea that the American president effectively embodies his own legislature is profoundly undemocratic and dangerous to the future of our self-government and our liberty.

  The media - self-censored and private-profit-driven as it is - is not only of no help in righting this insidious role reversal, because a primary cause of its existence, but a vigorous opponent to efforts to rebalance the Executive with the Legislative Branch of government. To the extent that David Axelrod, speaking for the president-elect recently regarding economic stimulus, ludicrously had to explain to that media that Members of Congress are not "potted plants" when it comes to federal policy debates, but in fact are "doing their jobs" by openly debating the pros and cons of legislative proposals, whether offered by the new president or by their legislative colleagues. Good for Axelrod. Shame on the American media.

  For those - like the too-powerful Barney Frank - who prefer, if possible (re TARP), to rely on the good will of a man and his Executive Branch team for competence and progress, in lieu of doing the hard work of forging and enacting into law careful, thoughtful legislative policy, some small imagination is required. Enough to realize that the identity and thus character of the man holding the presidency can change drastically in four years' time.

  So that anything and everything that today's "good man" unilaterally, voluntarily decrees and changes as president, can be just as easily and unilaterally "undecreed" and reversed by his successor. Unlike carefully-forged legislation that's in place and binding on our presidents, the temporary occupant's arbitrary whims notwithstanding. Such that the only reason for Members of Congress to "trust" instead of legislate, is to avoid the work their jobs require and/or to further aggrandize the presidency at the expense of our federal legislature.

  With regard to Obama, his bully-pulpit, and his leadership (assuming that the Democratic Party in Congress will defer to and favor the Democratic president's major legislative proposals in lieu of those from their committees of jurisdiction and rank-and-file legislators, in the continued absence of effective pressure from the media or the public to reverse that authoritarian, closed-door, Party-before-Congress trend), there's a something about Obama that tropicgirl I think puts her finger on:

  There should NEVER be imprisonment without a trial and there should NEVER be a trial with tainted evidence. Thats a concentration camp. The Iraq war veterans will tell you that even the US government refers to the camps as concentration camps. Not only is this WRONG but it is the ONE OF THE UNDERLYING CAUSES OF TERRORISM AGAINST THE WEST. That tells me that it's nothing but lack of nerve on the part of OB. He must know it's wrong. That's not good and he is actually endangering us by his pathetic attitude.

  -- tropicgirl

  I long ago noted an apparent cowardice in Obama, that may be exploitable if it in fact exists. If actions of his will lead, or do lead, to public outrage - even if only on "the blogs" - Obama's instinct, I think, is to quiet the furor, no matter the source. Which means that while he assiduously caters to the loudest Republican caterwaulers, and to the dishonest scolds of the media powers-that-be, he presumably is not, and will not be, immune to similar loud pressure from Americans advocating for our founding principles. What bears watching is how Obama chooses to quiet such complaints and whether there is conviction, or only misleading PR expediency, behind his responses.

  —pow wow Read pow wow's other letters
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