Why do you people keep repeating these blatant lies? The POTUS does not have direct power to do these kinds of things. It's the whole lot of politicians that are ignorant and corrupt.
When Bush was in charge, everyone was quick to blame him. But now that Obama is in charge, suddenly it is "president has never been the one pulling strings .. why is everyone blaming him?"
When Bush was in charge, Republicans apologized for him and Democrats blamed him personally for destroying the country.
While Obama is in charge, Democrats apologize for him and Republicans blame him personally for destroying the country.
The truth is, the president is never the one pulling the strings (at least not all of them), but both sides insist it's the case when it's to their advantage to attack strawman positions of the incumbent party.
I dunno, the whole concept of a "commander-in-chief" -- Chief Executive of a country, "The Buck Stops Here" -- is an odd dynamic. While we have the 3 branches of government, one of them is physically and institutionally commandeered by one human being, subject to the limitations and weaknesses shared by the 300 million human beings he oversees.
The checks and balances system is nice, preventing a situation in which a depressed or cranky president launches a war "just because"...But there are a lot of other less direct ways that his personal state of being could drastically affect the entire country. What if the senator who is a leading advocate for surveillance reform personally insulted the president's family? Sure, the senator's a jerk, and the president would never admit to basing his decision to ignore the senator on such a personal slight. But if such personal hostility resulted in the president putting the senator much lower on his priority list...such that he never gets around to giving the issue the proper amount of attention...The impact on the country is virtually the same as if the president's reaction had been, "Fk that d-bag and everything he stands for"
This is just a long way of saying, yeah, kind of crazy how so much of what affects us as a society is in the hands of one human being, and it's unfair to blame him for not being able to control everything. And yet, he is the one who signed up to have those powers...criticizing him is not just a reflexive tendency to scapegoat, but the current "user-friendly interface" we have with our bureaucracy.
>>> The POTUS does not have direct power to do these kinds of things
He hasn't had the power to do a lot of things but that hasn't stopped him from shredding the constitution and using executive orders to override his own legislation that passed into law did it?
People want to say he doesn't have these powers, but even a cursory look at how he's been running his office is in direct conflict to the statement.
Ok, I took a cursory look and I see that he uses executive orders less often than any other president (normalized per term served).
As for the first sentence, what are the examples of his orders that are shredding the constitution? Does SCOTUS (final authority on constitutional law) agrees with your assessment?
>> I took a cursory look and I see that he uses executive orders less often than any other president (normalized per term served).
It doesn't matter how many orders he's issued, but the overall effect of constitutionality.
>> what are the examples of his orders that are shredding the constitution?
First you have to understand what executive orders can't do. They cannot make laws and they cannot stop laws from being carried out.
- This means his executive order to delay the employer mandate - but only for certain businesses. He said he will not enforce the mandate for businesses with 50-100 employees, but will enforce it for business with more than 100 employees.
THAT is effectively writing new a law. Congress said it starts at 50, but Obama says it starts at 100. By the constitution, only congress has this power, not the POTUS.
- Another example is his changes to the DACA act to include illegals who entered the country before 2010. Again, this is not something he has the power to do. By actively not enforcing exiting laws, and then creating his own set of criteria on who can stay in the US and who cannot, he's subverted the existing immigration laws and replacing it with his own.
- Another good example is how he said that person or business that doesn't support LGBT nondiscrimination cannot receive a business contract with the government. This means if a Muslim doesn't want to bake a cake for a gay couple, the government has the right to refuse to do business with them.
I won't even start with how unconstitutional such a law would be if it was passed by congress. Considering this is already protected under the Free Exercise Clause of the first amendment which states no citizen can be required to forfeit their right to do business with the federal government.
Again, only congress has the ability pass a law like this, but Obama did so anyways.
This is the issue with his orders. It has nothing to do with how many orders he's making, it's how he's using them. Effectively creating or overriding existing laws as he sees fit - something the POTUS should not have the power to do.
I don't agree with you that number of orders is irrelevant. It at the minimum is an indicator of administration policies.
As for your examples, I am not a constitutional scholar, neither is you. Right now they are just your opinions. For instance, Free Exercise Clause does not mention right to do business with the federal government. I'll wait for SCOTUS interpretation of the clause rather than yours.
He may not officially have the power to change things through the official bureaucratic channels, but he could stop them if he wanted. He has a lot of power that he doesn't tap into. For example, he has the ability to address the nation. With that power alone you can really stir up some change.
> For example, he has the ability to address the nation.
This power is pretty overrated.
How often have you turned on the TV and seen a network cover the entirety of one of Obama's speeches/press conferences, other than a major speech like the state of the union? Usually they cut away to something else after a little while or don't cover it at all, except maybe on a morning show.
Being from a country where the TV and radio networks are required to stop whatever they are doing to air a presidential speech, this sounds really strange.
Such a weak excuse. Sure a TV show might not play clippings from a speech of his, but if Obama actually offers to do a live interview on any TV show, no one would turn down that ratings boost.
Right! That's why I consider, for example, his campaigning on closing Guantanamo to be completely disingenuous.
Get on TV every single night, spread awareness about what's happening there, tell US citizens that we need to lead by example, and use the propaganda machine to create positive change, for once.
The truth is with a bad economy the more a president with lagging approval ratings gets involved in some issues the less likely their passage.
More importantly there's a limited amount of political capital you have as POTUS. While you may think Obama should have directed more of this to closing Gitmo, I think the big ticket accomplishments he spent that political capital on such as ACA were more important.
How can you honestly say the ACA was more important than shutting down a US run gulag that actively commits war crimes on a daily basis with approval from the entire chain of command?
I can honestly say it is not even close: access to health care via ACA saves more lives every year than the population of Gitmo by nearly two orders of magnitude.[1]
And it's not clear at all that Obama could have successfully closed Gitmo even had it been a higher priority of his. It is clear that he immediately ended interrogative torture [2] and made efforts to close it. There's still force feeding but that's also an issue in us prisons so closing gitmo and sending the detainees to other prisons is not necessarily solving anything there.
It's clear that he issued an executive order, which may or may not be utterly meaningless.
And Gitmo was just an example, not necessarily saying it would even be at the top of my list. Of course sending the detainees to other prisons is not the answer. These people need to be freed, now. Same deal with the multitude of other US military prisons and CIA black sites.
The word you used above was 'disingenuous' and I think that deeply mischaraterizes the issue. The overwhelming blame for gitmo being open today falls on the GOP.
