Now the Republicans are calling Obama’s plan to halt deportations by executive action unconstitutional, overstepping his constitutional authority, invading Congress’ turf. In the W years they were defending the “unitary executive” concept and the president’s authority to add binding “signing statements” to legislation, etc. ISTM that neither party has a consistent position here – generally, each party always wants supremacy and maximum scope/powers/autonomy for whichever branch it controls at the moment. But that’s the parties. Considering liberals and conservatives (and libertarians and socialists, etc.) as such, is there any actual ideological argument that would take a more consistent position on one side or the other of the division-of-powers issue?
You don’t say.
Remember what Senator (and presidential candidate) Obama said about the use of military force w/o authorization from Congress? Remember what Obama said just last year about acting on immigration without Congressional authorization?
WaPo factchecker on Obama’s immigration stance
Candidate Obama on the use of military force:
Things look different once you’re sitting in the Oval Office.
I can only speak for myself (not liberals or conservatives), but I agree with candidate Obama on the use of military force. As for the deportation of illegal immigrants, I actually think it’s a little fuzzier. We don’t deport most of the folks who are here illegally, so it seems like he’s just going to formalize what we typically do anyway. But let’s wait until he actually announces what he plans to do before we judge it.
I hated it when George W. Bush made alterations in laws via “signing statements,” and when his supporters floated the concept of the “unitary executive.”
I’m a good solid old-fashioned Hubert Humphrey liberal – and my opinion is not changed today. I don’t want the President to act on his own, no matter how much I wish for the reforms he wants to press for. I want the branches to work together, or else to sit in a stalemate until one side or the other wises up and begins to cooperate.
That there may be a high cost in human suffering is sad, and worse than sad, it’s evil. But, well, it seems to a lot of us that the Constitution is worth preserving. I deplored Bush’s tentative moves toward aggrandizing executive power, and I don’t feel at all comfortable with the idea of Obama doing it.
(While I’m on the subject, I also deplore the way Bush fired Federal Attorneys who were investigating Republican legislators for corruption.)
Pssst! C’mere! I’ll tell ya a secret! It ain’t!
There SHOULD be a clear liberal and conservative posiiton, but in reality? It all depends on who controls which branch of the government.
Both sides support the powers and perks of whichever branch(es) they happen to control. When the judiciary is controlled by liberals, conservatives will scream bloody murder about “activist” judges while liberals will sing the praises of a “living Constitution.” If the Republicans ever held a 7-2 majority on the high court, you can bet the roles would be reversed in no time.
Liberals who decried the Imperial Presidency when Nixon was in office think it’s great that Obama is threatening to act like an imperial president. It’s all about who’s running what.
I’m trying to see how this adds any value to the debate. Care to share what point you were trying to make? Let me try - I’m sure this will convince of something.
Really, the guy who votes for the socialist workers party candidate, which is a Marxist group, advocates tossing out the Consitution. How surprising.
Do you just randomly google shit and post it to GD threads?
On the actual OP topic, neither party has a consistent position because both parties want to seize as much power as possible and deny the other party any power, if possible. This is why both parties suck. And this is why we, the public, regardless of which side we favor, need to reign in the politicians when they start overstepping even if we agree with the particular policy they are trying to implement.
But that won’t happen any time soon as each party has a solid base that will never vote for the other side. So each party can gradually swing things their way when they are in power, as long as they don’t piss off the independants too much.
What ought to happen is that the power to use executive actions/signing statements/etc ought to be rolled back.
Slee
In this case, I read the book and it impressed me; I mention/link it whenever the question of the value as such of the Constitution arises.
I like democracy to be paralyzed! There are few things in this world I fear more than the tyranny of the majority.
The Constitution is of great value in that it limits what the majority can accomplish, and it does this, quite wonderfully, by setting the major centers of power against each other.
This is why I oppose a major increase of power in any of the branches of government. I don’t want any President to become like Putin; I don’t want any Congress to be able to remove the President trivially; I don’t want any Supreme Court to be able to elevate either of the other two branches.
The Soviet Union was once described as having two dwarves with a crocodile in leash: the KGB and the Party controlled the Army.
The U.S. sometimes looks like one dwarf (the Supreme Court) dancing back and forth between two crocodiles (Executive and Legislative branches.)
The absolutely vital thing is that we avoid One-Party Rule, because that’s the bullet-train to hell.
Despite the left-leaning anti-Constitutionalists who apparently believe an all-powerful unicameral legislature will solve all the nation’s problems (hint hint BG), the Founders’ great fear was in fact an all-powerful unicameral legislature that would allow a simple majority to trample on the freedoms of everyone else.
Thus, they devised a brilliant 3-pronged system of government wherein power is spread and potential abuse is kept in check.
Only in the 20th century, starting with the great socialist FDR, did the idea that the president had all these secret superpowers begin to gain traction. Please note that most of the gross expansion of executive power have come under liberal presidents. Thus, modern conservatives are generally seen as pro-legislature and anti-executive, because they historically have rejected the large ambitions of liberal presidents like FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
They (the conservatives) betrayed their sensibilities, however, as Nixon became power-hungry and Bush essentially nullified legislation by adding a statement upon signing into law that read “I will sign this bill but I won’t enforce it.” Shame on them.
As an aside, I imagine if you polled Americans and asked them which branch of government is most prone to abuse, the common answer would be the judiciary. Both sides, especially after Roe v. Wade, see judges as “legislating from the bench” whenever they rule opposite of their preference.
So, all in all, we don’t have runaway abuse in any particular branch of government. Everyone is unhappy with all branches. The Constitution, and the wisdom of its writers, is once again proven the Gold Standard.
Congress should declare war if politicians decide the U.S. should fight one.
It’s, like, constitutional.
I’m glad the book impressed you. From what you’ve stated, I’ve learned the following pieces of information. You can read. You acquired a book. It impressed you. Posting a link to an amazon page adds absolutely zero value to any discussion without contemporaneous explanation of why you think it is relevant and what point you’re trying to make.
In other words, do you care to share what point you were trying to make?
Congress did pass a law limiting the President’s unilateral use of force.
As per the linked War Powers Resolution, Congress is required to authorize the continued use of force, which is in essence a declaration of war.
Perhaps you could elaborate on your criticism. Declaring war is a mere formality once Congress has passed a law authorizing a sustained military conflict. They are in essence the same thing, are they not?
In a parliamentary system it’s always one-party rule at any given time, apart from coalition governments; and countries having such a system are not on any bullet-train to Hell; and presidential systems certainly have no better track record for abuses of power. There are some things the FFs were simply wrong about, and the necessity of separation of powers apparently is one of them.
See post #14.
Those are legal arguments. What I’m looking for are non-legal political arguments, and specifically ideological political arguments, either on the presidential or the congressional side of the division of powers question (mine in post #14 is political but non-ideological; and is about the relative merits of parliamentary v. separation-of-powers systems, not about the optimal allocation of powers in the latter). The closest thing yet posted in this thread is Stringbean’s post #10, which comes down on the congressional side for reasons asserted as conservative reasons.
Any point would be a hijack in this thread. As said, I simply do – and should – mention/link that book as a matter of course whenever the question of the value as such of the Constitution arises. And an Amazon link at least can tell you what the book is about. Lazare’s book includes a lot of truly fascinating history about the “Court” and “Country” parties in America and the UK in the 18th Century, and about the political influence of utililitarianism in the UK (very definitely not in America) in the early 19th; but all of that would be material for a different thread.
Signing statements go back to George Washington.