I do not think lowering the pay gets around the wording at all. It gets to the spirit of what the FF’s were presumably after (to prevent people from putting in a big pay raise before they take a post) but the letter of the law is explicit in not allowing it. Period.
I agree it is not a Constitutional tragedy if she gets the office. She is wealthy enough to forgo all pay and not really care. Clearly this is not a money grab on her part and doubtless she will be peachy with the lower salary. However, we simply are not meant to cherry-pick the parts of the Constitution we are ok with and ignore the inconvenient bits. I’d think an Amendment to allow for such a posting would breeze through (not in time to help Clinton of course). Till then she is ineligible for that office for the time being.
Then send it to the SCOTUS for a decision. I’m cool with that.
Problem is no one seems to be able to figure out who would have standing to bring a lawsuit to get it there (which seems weird to me that no one would be deemed appropriate for filing suit but that’s what I have read on this).
And your example is a broad and sweeping command that cannot possibly work without some caveats (e.g. no yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire). The part in question here is narrowly focused. There are other people available and qualified for the Sec State position. A legal eagle will have to help out here but I think when the judiciary looks at something like this they would not see a need to read exceptions into it.
An amendment would probably take several months. So, at least that time, this literalist view would deny Obama the ability to appoint the person he thinks is best for the job even though the reason for the clause - based on past threads, I believe that’s got to do with frivolous appointments and conflicts of interest - does not apply to Clinton at all. I don’t think that’s smart. The issue should be resolved, but there’s no reason a compromise on Clinton’s salary shouldn’t satisfy everybody in this case.
I’m fine with the Hillary pick, though I was surprised at first (and I still think the Dems will miss her presence in the Senate – especially on any attempt at UHC). She’s tough, she’s smart and she starts out with a measure of good will and familiarity on the international scene. I also think Whack-a-Mole’s Constitutional objection is a non-starter, given that there is already established precedence for resolution and virtually zero chance of any challenge.
I’m also ok with keeping Gates at Defense. He hasn’t fucked anything up yet, and Iraq is a delicate enough situation that it’s probably prudent not to rock the boat now that it’s sailing pretty smoothly.
I confess to not knowing much about Rice, but I’m ok with the other choices. It looks like Obama is really going for experience and qualifications rather than for ideological or political considerations.
Has Clinton quit her job as a senator yet? Because if the salary is decreased to the prior level while she is still in office then I can see a case: if the salary was $100,000 before this time period, and $100,000 afterwards, then one can argue that it was not increased during this time. It all depends on what tense you consider the underlined text to be: does it refer to the time period as a whole (in which case if the salary at the end of the time period is not greater than at the beginning then there was no increase) or any instantaneous point during the time period (in which case a $0.01 raise followed by a $10,000 decrease five minutes later would still mean the law applies)?
I guess this is what the supreme court is for. I’d be interested to hear what Bricker or some of our other lawyerly types think of this. I know just enough about the law (and the semantics of English, for that matter) to embarrass myself.
Thank you for your posts about Holder tim314. They take the edge off and ultimately I do trust Obama to do what’s best for the country. I’ll admit that my disappointment in Holder might partially be due to wanting either Vincent Bugliosi or Elliot Spitzer* in that spot. Wild pipe dreams, I know.
*yeah, so he paid for hookers. I care? No. It’s not my business. He was a fighter against corruption and was targeted.
Clinton “best for the job”? Seriously? Indeed part of my reason for wishing Clinton out of the Sec State position is because I do not believe she is best for the job and I think Sec State is an exceptionally important position. Clinton is clearly intelligent and capable but her experience as a diplomat are almost non-existent. Particularly in the world which we are currently faced with a skilled and proven diplomat would be ideal for the job. Doubtless there are some to choose from.
I can only see Obama’s appointing her as a political move and not a principled move. Either he promised her something like this for her support (or something) or he wants her out of the Senate…perhaps to keep her away from UHC (which Obama stated during the campaign he fully intended Clinton to be a huge part of any UHC work). Or some other calculation. While it may be politically expedient and what Obama wants I wish he was not dangling such a critical cabinet post for his purposes.
So, I see the Constitutional angle as a convenient out. Everyone saves face and the position was offered and Clinton can stay in the Senate where I think she would be powerful and useful.
If someone were ever able to get this to the Supreme Court I’d be willing to bet money they’d declare Clinton ineligible. Of course it probably never will. I get what you are saying the intent of the FF’s was when writing that but it does not change the text. Nebraska had teenagers dumped on them because their Safe Haven law allowed it. They ran back and fixed it to stop that but while the law was on the books it operated as written…not as the legislators wished it did. The same should hold true for the Constitution.
All that said admittedly I am having a hard time generating a lot of righteous indignation over it all. Still do not like it and think it is wrong.
Pretty much all legal analysis I have seen say the Clinton appointment is almost certainly unconstitutional. Go tell the constitutional lawyers they are wrong if you like.
As it is though they also admit if the Senate confirms her they cannot see who could possibly have standing to make a court case out of it. As such it will likely go through no problem and that’s that.
I didn’t say she’s the best person for the job. I said Obama thinks she’s the best person for the job, and he’s the one who gets to make the choice.
He didn’t need to give her the most senior position in the cabinet to get her support. And other people who supported him are not getting this kind of reward. I don’t think there was a deal like that.
Why would he want to keep her away from his health care plan when it’s something she strongly favors? I know they differed on some details, but it just doesn’t make sense. We’ve seen already that he doesn’t have a problem with people disagreeing with him, and making her secretary of state would not be an effective way of getting her out of his hair.
If anything I see it as the opposite: she wasn’t going to have that much to do with the health care plan, since Kennedy still plans on spearheading it. Under a plan Democrats were discussing weeks ago, she might’ve gotten to lead one subcommittee. It didn’t look like a particularly big role.
It would be a fiasco for Obama if he were unable to follow up on an offer like this. He’d look stupid.
It’s much easier to change a law passed by a legislative body than to get 37 states to pass a Constitutional amendment.
Do you think she is the best person for the job as far as experience goes? I am guessing you do not. Obama is a smart guy. Pretty sure he would have noticed that too. Therefore, there must be something else that makes the Clinton appointment the choice he wanted to make. I can only suppose it was a promise or a political calculation I am too dumb to divine.
Clinton was holding some 16 million disaffected Clinton voters in her pocket. That is worth a large promise seems to me. Of course many would go on their own but without active, smiling, unreserved support from Clinton back then it was hard to know how many would move to Obama of their own accord. So it does not seem an overly generous promise on that basis.
As for UHC I am unsure how Kennedy got his mits on it. Clinton owned it before, Obama said in speeches he’d make Clilnton central in any role designing a UHC. Not sure how Clinton could be so thoroughly sidelined but I admit I do not follow Senate in-fighting and how it all works.
Maybe since he is a Constitutional scholar supposedly but he could well say it was done before and thought it was fine again. Not his fault someone else wanted to make a Federal case out of it.
Merely pointing out the notion that a law is enforced as it is written…not as the legislators wish it was written.
That does not make it legal. As noted in an earlier link Democrats, one of whom is still in the Senate, opposed the Saxbe fix on the grounds it was unconstitutional. There may be no way to get it to court due to the perversity of who has standing but that does not make it legal. Most analysis I have seen suggests if it went to court it’d easily be found to be unconstitutional.
So Congress can end-run the Constitution due to procedural vagaries. Great…so glad. :rolleyes:
I’m really surprised he didn’t offer her House and Human Services. That would fit into her health-care interests and be a job to keep her around. Then he could pick someone with real diplomatic skills to be SOS. I like Richardson for that, pity he got Commerce. There’s a prestige order to Cabinet posts, isn’t there?
This is faulty reasoning. I think it’s much more likely he simply has a different idea of what her capabilities are (and what the other candidates have to offer).
That was nonsense from the beginning. She worked hard for him, but the vast majority of those people were always going to vote for Obama, and the idea that they wouldn’t was absurd.
It’s been his issue for decades.
She was involved in it in 1993 and by most accounts botched it. Obama did not say he was going to make Clinton central in that effort - it’s not up to him. He said she would be central.
[qoute]Not sure how Clinton could be so thoroughly sidelined but I admit I do not follow Senate in-fighting and how it all works.
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As a second-term senator, she has little seniority and not a lot of major committee assignments. There was talk that she might be given a bigger role in recognition of her accomplishments in the campaign, but in reality she was behind dozens of other Democrats and they weren’t all going to move aside just for her.
That wouldn’t work. He’d look like an idiot if he tried to appoint someone who was constitutionally ineligible; there’s really no two ways about it.
A shot in the dark here: nobody expects Gates to stay on for long. I’ll predict that about two years from now, after the 16-month period is safely over, Gates resigns and Jones is promoted to secretary of defense.
