Barack Obama's Arbitrary and Chaotic Administration
Bruce Walker, in "Two Hundred Days of Hope and Change," published in American Thinker (http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/two_hundred_days_of_hope_and_c.html) argues that Obama's administrative style is similar to Benito Mussolini's:
America was a constitutional republic in which chief officers were vetted and approved by the Senate. The other workable system has been parliamentary democracy in which responsible ministers resign when their departments screw up.
What is the Obama system? Who knows? Overly inquisitive inspectors, we know, get fired, but that's about all we know.
The president convenes federal legislators, as if they were his employees and not our protectors from executive abuses and tell them to come up with plans to submit to him. His floor leaders present unreadable and unread bills and twist arms to get congressmen and senators to vote for the bills -- how this is intended to mimic a legislative process is not clear: Why not just ask for a vote on Obama's Four Year Plan, details to come later?
I think that Bruce overstates his case here, and for one simple reason. While Obama can of course freely delegate authority on various topics to various non-departmental officials (his "czars"), Obama does not have authority over the Congress. A lot of Congressmen who trusted him and voted blindly on his incomprehensible bills are now finding out that those bills contained provisions which are making their constituents very angry. Unlike Benito Mussolini, Obama does not have goon squads capable of operating above the law to enforce his will on the legislators. When push comes to shove, either the Congress will stop rubber-stamping Obama's proposals, or come January 2011 we will have a Republican Congress.
It is true, though, that Obama is trying to govern as if he had dictatorial authority. The term in Yiddish for this is chutzpah, and either Obama is bluffing or he has a big surprise coming for him when one after another of his policies gets shot down.
President Bush was not very popular when he left office, but he left more than half a year ago and still the CIA seems to remain in his hands, not in the hands of Obama. The Bush CIA in 2009 is still misleading Congress, the President, and who knows whom else. The economy, it seems, is still the responsibility of Bush, despite the fact that Democrats controlled Congress during the last two years of his presidency.
This is a pretty serious criticism of Obama. The CIA, after all, is an Executive Branch agency, which means that it is directly under Obama's authority. If CIA officials are really refusing to cooperate with Congress and Obama really doesn't like this, he can end or ruin the careers of said officials with a few spoken words. We should be hearing about high CIA officials, previously on the fast track to the top, resigning because they've just been assigned to weather monitoring stations in Antarctica.
Since we aren't, it's obvious either that Obama is really quite happy about the lack of CIA cooperation with Congress, or that he is such an air-headed lightweight that he can't handle the administration of an agency under him in the chain of command. This would create serious doubts about his ability to manipulate people not under his control, if he can't even get the ones who are under his control to do what he says!
Our president has essentially given up on the rule of law and ordered liberty. He is no Hitler, no Stalin, and no Mao. He is, instead, very much a Mussolini. He will push business, labor, local governments, and other social institutions into the vague directions which seem best to him. He will make business do what it should (and he knows best) and he will create a bewildering array of grand and petite officers to watch this and regulate that.
We are almost there -- we have come so far! -- when members of Congress can vote on legislation which could be called the "Blank Check Bill" and when even the failures of his own party can be blamed, retroactively, on the failures of the party out of power, then we are close to that fairly tame totalitarianism, Fascism. When Obama can almost dictate the questions he will be asked in any forum, then we are near to having our Duce.
But unlike Mussolini, he is trying to become dicatator over a country with a healthy electoral system and a people accustomed to democratic rule for some 235 years. He has already begun to trigger one major check to balance his authority -- he is destroying the popularity of his own Congressional supporters -- and he seems to be such a fool that his only response has been to claim a right-wing conspiracy.
Things will be getting far rougher for him from now on, and while I doubt that he'll end hanging upside down from a lamp post, he will almost certainly not succeed in being a two-term President.
America was a constitutional republic in which chief officers were vetted and approved by the Senate. The other workable system has been parliamentary democracy in which responsible ministers resign when their departments screw up.
What is the Obama system? Who knows? Overly inquisitive inspectors, we know, get fired, but that's about all we know.
The president convenes federal legislators, as if they were his employees and not our protectors from executive abuses and tell them to come up with plans to submit to him. His floor leaders present unreadable and unread bills and twist arms to get congressmen and senators to vote for the bills -- how this is intended to mimic a legislative process is not clear: Why not just ask for a vote on Obama's Four Year Plan, details to come later?
I think that Bruce overstates his case here, and for one simple reason. While Obama can of course freely delegate authority on various topics to various non-departmental officials (his "czars"), Obama does not have authority over the Congress. A lot of Congressmen who trusted him and voted blindly on his incomprehensible bills are now finding out that those bills contained provisions which are making their constituents very angry. Unlike Benito Mussolini, Obama does not have goon squads capable of operating above the law to enforce his will on the legislators. When push comes to shove, either the Congress will stop rubber-stamping Obama's proposals, or come January 2011 we will have a Republican Congress.
It is true, though, that Obama is trying to govern as if he had dictatorial authority. The term in Yiddish for this is chutzpah, and either Obama is bluffing or he has a big surprise coming for him when one after another of his policies gets shot down.
President Bush was not very popular when he left office, but he left more than half a year ago and still the CIA seems to remain in his hands, not in the hands of Obama. The Bush CIA in 2009 is still misleading Congress, the President, and who knows whom else. The economy, it seems, is still the responsibility of Bush, despite the fact that Democrats controlled Congress during the last two years of his presidency.
This is a pretty serious criticism of Obama. The CIA, after all, is an Executive Branch agency, which means that it is directly under Obama's authority. If CIA officials are really refusing to cooperate with Congress and Obama really doesn't like this, he can end or ruin the careers of said officials with a few spoken words. We should be hearing about high CIA officials, previously on the fast track to the top, resigning because they've just been assigned to weather monitoring stations in Antarctica.
Since we aren't, it's obvious either that Obama is really quite happy about the lack of CIA cooperation with Congress, or that he is such an air-headed lightweight that he can't handle the administration of an agency under him in the chain of command. This would create serious doubts about his ability to manipulate people not under his control, if he can't even get the ones who are under his control to do what he says!
Our president has essentially given up on the rule of law and ordered liberty. He is no Hitler, no Stalin, and no Mao. He is, instead, very much a Mussolini. He will push business, labor, local governments, and other social institutions into the vague directions which seem best to him. He will make business do what it should (and he knows best) and he will create a bewildering array of grand and petite officers to watch this and regulate that.
We are almost there -- we have come so far! -- when members of Congress can vote on legislation which could be called the "Blank Check Bill" and when even the failures of his own party can be blamed, retroactively, on the failures of the party out of power, then we are close to that fairly tame totalitarianism, Fascism. When Obama can almost dictate the questions he will be asked in any forum, then we are near to having our Duce.
But unlike Mussolini, he is trying to become dicatator over a country with a healthy electoral system and a people accustomed to democratic rule for some 235 years. He has already begun to trigger one major check to balance his authority -- he is destroying the popularity of his own Congressional supporters -- and he seems to be such a fool that his only response has been to claim a right-wing conspiracy.
Things will be getting far rougher for him from now on, and while I doubt that he'll end hanging upside down from a lamp post, he will almost certainly not succeed in being a two-term President.