Politics Today
Neil Boortz was a little upsetting today. I've had this growing discontent with people blaming the President for things that are clearly perpetrated by the legislative branch. Formally, as I understand it, the only real power he has is to veto. This yields some implicit power to negotiate, but, it's not quite the same as the level behind calling something "ObamaCare." Fundamentally it's disingenuous to make that out to be one man's fault when the legislative branch passed it.
On some level I can forgive pundits for simplifying things to the point where they blame the wrong branch of the government, but, if you're going to do this, then you must do it evenly. The President is in charge of the armed forces, so it makes sense to blame him for its failures and laud him for its accomplishments. Boortz took the odd stance that Osama bin Laden doesn't belong among Obama's accomplishments because of how little he had to do with that; however, unlike the legislative branch, he actually dictates terms to the military.
Maybe there's some deeper meaning he's going for by pointing out how much the President's powers and responsibilities bleed into the legislative branch, but I don't think that's it. I think it may actually be that everybody in the know colludes to maintain this perspective. The President changes every four to eight years, so legislators have a lot to gain by making everything this man's fault while they go on to serve for forty years. It's unfortunate how many people have successfully had this wool pulled over their eyes.
As a simple aside, it was also funny when he made a comment that if Jaime Dupre developed a subjective opinion he could have a show. It's sad that there really is no place for journalists that try to evaluate what's going on from an objective perspective. I do mean evaluate. He tries to actually discuss the implications and realistically evaluate the other sides rather than just telling us what happened and then maybe tossing in a "some people are saying."
On some level I can forgive pundits for simplifying things to the point where they blame the wrong branch of the government, but, if you're going to do this, then you must do it evenly. The President is in charge of the armed forces, so it makes sense to blame him for its failures and laud him for its accomplishments. Boortz took the odd stance that Osama bin Laden doesn't belong among Obama's accomplishments because of how little he had to do with that; however, unlike the legislative branch, he actually dictates terms to the military.
Maybe there's some deeper meaning he's going for by pointing out how much the President's powers and responsibilities bleed into the legislative branch, but I don't think that's it. I think it may actually be that everybody in the know colludes to maintain this perspective. The President changes every four to eight years, so legislators have a lot to gain by making everything this man's fault while they go on to serve for forty years. It's unfortunate how many people have successfully had this wool pulled over their eyes.
As a simple aside, it was also funny when he made a comment that if Jaime Dupre developed a subjective opinion he could have a show. It's sad that there really is no place for journalists that try to evaluate what's going on from an objective perspective. I do mean evaluate. He tries to actually discuss the implications and realistically evaluate the other sides rather than just telling us what happened and then maybe tossing in a "some people are saying."