On January 20th, 2009, it is overwhelmingly likely that either John McCain or Barack Obama will be called upon to utter the Presidential oath of office, set forth with majestic simplicity in Article II, section 1 of the United States Constitution:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
“Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That is what the President of the United States promises to do.
Two days ago, a 2001 interview with then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama from WBEZ radio surfaced (I wrote about it here). The ostensible subject was the civil rights movement: its triumphs and tragedies. But what catapulted the interview into the headlines were the candid and revealing comments Obama made about the Supreme Court and the Constitution.
The Warren Court, Obama said, was “not that radical.” It “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.” Moreover, ” “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.” (My emphasis.)
The problem with the Constitution, Obama went on to say, is that it is merely “a charter of negative liberties”: it only tells you what the state and federal government “can’t do to you.” Hence the tragedy of the civil-rights movement and its focus on merely “formal” rights: it lost “track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”
As Steven G. Calabresi noted in in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Obama’s reflections on the Supreme Court and the Constitution raise the question of whether
Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” as he must do if he is to take office. Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare? Is his provision of a “tax cut” to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the candidate ought to be asked to answer these questions before the election rather than after.
Those are among the most pressing questions yet raised in this campaign. I wish some enterprising journalist could contrive to pose them to Barack Obama. What do you suppose he would say?
Well, “Change” is the great mantra of the Obama campaign. Perhaps the change will begin with the oath of office itself. Why need he “preserve” or “protect” or “defend” a document which, in another recently released talk, he criticized for reflecting “an enormous blind spot in this culture,” “the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day”? Why not say he will endeavor to bring about social justice by putting together “the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change”? So how about:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, modify the Constitution of the United States in order to bring it into line with my progressive ideas about social and economic justice.
The Constitution, as Obama rightly noted, is in the main a charter of “negative liberties.” It tells the government what it cannot do to citizens. But the other great Obama mantra is Vero Posummus: “Yes we can.” So what if the Constitution forbids this or that intrusion by the government into the liberties and property of its citizens? The Constitution says No. Obama and his minions reply, Yes we can. Here’s the really frightening question: Would anybody notice?
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Introduction by Roger Kimball
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13 Comments
1. B:Where, Mr Kimball, is your outrage for the constitution-mangling incumbents?
Oct 29, 2008 - 8:29 am 2. cfbleachers:Here is my concern. What he have here, is failure to communicate. Or perhaps an intentional shroud over our communication channels, so that the picture is obscured.
I don’t know what is real, what is imagined, what is overblown and what is tin foil hat conspiracy. I can’t separate out the wheat from the chaff…because NONE of it gets examined in our corrupt and diseased information stream.
Below is a long litany of items related to Senator Obama. Somebody, anybody…with a shred of credibility and integrity must…must…fisk this list of items and put it into something coherent and reasonable.
http://www.colony14.net/id41.html
How in the world can NOBODY at Columbia University remember him? Nobody?
How did he get into Columbia…with poor high school grades and apparently not much more at Occidental?
How did he pay for his education, and where is this proof that he was struggling to pay back student loans? Is this important information because of “other” issues? If it is, what are those issues? If it isn’t…why is it hidden?
How did he get into Harvard Law School? Certainly not on his grades from college. Who helped him?
Why is there no hospital record of his birth? Is this important or not? Did he apply to any college or university as a foreigner? Did obtain any grants or aid based upon being a foreign student? Was he assigned roommates based upon being a foreigner? Are these real issues?
Is it at all important whether or not he “technically” has standing to run for national office? How in the world does a person coming back from an overseas flight have to prove more authenticity than does a candidate for President?
Wouldn’t one think that a background check would include some basic stuff…like, citizenship? Are we that lax? Are we insane?
I am repelling every thought of tin foil hat conspiracy nonsense. ON BOTH SIDES…Oliver Stone’s stuff leaves me cold. But, c’mon…asking for definitive proof of citizenship isn’t that much of a burden. Why the mystery and intrigue surrounding this?
I don’t know Freddoso, Berg, Corsi from a hill of beans. Maybe they are nutjobs, then ok, let’s prove it and enlist them in the hall of shame.
But the mountain of stuff that has been withheld, secreted, pulled off of websites and gone completely unexamined by the entrenched media…stinks of a coverup that would put Watergate into lightweight dime store expose’ status in comparison.
How in heaven’s name can the meat of these allegations go unexamined? Which of these things are “facts” and which are speculations and concoctions?
We don’t have an active working press any longer, so we don’t know. I want to know. We should DEMAND to know. And there’s the rub of it. If they don’t want to help us find out, we have no choice but to assume the worst of it. It’s a conspiracy of silence and the entrenched media are front and center in keeping it hidden.
SOMEBODY has to fisk this stuff. It is a despicable shame that we don’t know the basic, fundamental, rudimentary facts that would be MANDATORY disclosures on a job application for a low level staffer…but we can’t find out from a candidate for our Presidency.
Would you hire an accountant for your company, a human resources director, a controller, a public relations director, a chief of strategic planning, …and allow them to tell you that they won’t release their college records to you?
Would the FBI or CIA hire someone without doing a background check?
Yet, we are going to put someone into the office that oversees those elements of our society (budget, public relations, strategic planning, national defense) and there is less documentation required than a postal worker has to give to secure a job with the government. Is that rational to everyone else but me?
I don’t care what some feckless judge says, if we don’t have standing as citizens to know whether or not someone running for President is qualified…then that courtroom is a sham. It’s not HIS courtroom…it’s ours.
If this is NOT an issue…then let’s get on with it and get it out in the open. I’m sick and tired of being treated with disrespect and being lied to by our information stream. By the grace of God, do what is right and tell us what is real, what is fact, what is imagined, what is concocted so we can govern this land of ours.
It is NOT your right to disguise the truth and manipulate it to your whim. And by the way, a half-truth is a whole lie.
You, in the entrenched media have behaved disgracefully. You have shamed yourselves and have damaged our country. Give us truth or get the hell out of the business that demands that you do so.
Here is the rub of it. Because you have intentionally defrauded the public you are duty bound to serve, no man or woman of conscience should reward you. The punishment should be that every vote, of every man or woman of conscience should go in the direct opposite direction to your fraud. We should assume the worst, since you won’t tell us enough to be able to ascertain the truth.
Somebody with credibility fisk these allegations and separate out truth from fiction, fact from fantasy. We can’t hold an election in the dark. And nothing is more sinister than an information stream that can’t be trusted.
Oct 29, 2008 - 10:51 am 3. Brent:Let’s start with the beginning of the above mentioned document:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Note that the framers used the phrases (to pick just two) “establish justice” and “promote the general welfare” without specifying any definition of same, for they realized that it would be inappropriate for any constitutive document to try to frame such speifics that are better left to the legislative process. It is a strategic goal-oriented statement where the particulars were left for future generations to ponder.
What these terms mean and imply involves, by the very deliberate design of this minimalist document, future INTERPRETATIONS that must be made by each generation.
To argue that the courts or the executive or legislative branches must strictly construe the phase “establish justice” or the “general welfare” is, on the face of it, just drivilous. For there is nothing to construe, rather, there is something that must be defined by these branches in consultation with the people through a democratic process.
Thus political opposites like a Regan or Obama can both preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, each in his own interpreted way, for there is no one timeless interpretation, strict or otherwise, of such an imprecise document.
Oct 29, 2008 - 5:32 pm 4. mtraven:More second-hand lies. Kimball is channelling the Drudge Report — could anything further cement his reputation as a non-intellectual? If you want the truth of this, see here.
The quote: “an enormous blind spot in this culture,” “the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day” refers to slavery, which every schoolboy knows was written into the original constitution and only removed a century later. So I take it that Kimball supports slavery and would repeal the 13th amendment? The passers of that and all other constitutional amendments were not afraid of critiquing and modifying the constitution.
Oct 29, 2008 - 6:57 pm 5. Michael Lonie:That’s the Preamble. The actual articles specify enumerated powers the Federal Government can exercise. It forbids the Federal Government from exercising others, espcially in the Bill of Rights. Amendments 9 and 10 reserve those powers not specifically extended to the Federal Government to the states and the people.
If yo want a welfare state why don’t you pass amendments to establish it constitutionally, instead of shredding the Cosntituttion by making the whims of judges and law clerks the law of the land? Answer: because it takes too long dontcherknow, and because confronted with explicit proposals to change America into some unsustainable European tax-hell most people would balk and not support the idea. Liberals can get their ideas enacted only by stealth or by judicial fiat.
Oct 29, 2008 - 9:58 pm 6. Roger’s Rules » Thoughts on the instinct of self-preservation or, Why I still, even now, believe John McCain will be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20:[...] of wealth.” If Obama wants to remove such “essential constraints,” can he in good faith place his hand on the Bible and swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United [...]
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:21 am 7. Thoughts on the instinct of self-preservation or, Why I still, even now, believe John McCain will be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20 « Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian:[...] of wealth.” If Obama wants to remove such “essential constraints,” can he in [12] good faith place his hand on the Bible and swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United [...]
Nov 4, 2008 - 8:53 am 8. Andre' Jones:I can’t beleive this! Here we want a change and it can’t be radical?!eeeegaddddds! It would be nice to be toweled dried by a nannny that doesn’t make minimum wage. You are not main stream. I don’t think any one has been bottle fed by a stuffed teddy bear.
Nov 10, 2008 - 6:42 pm 9. Andre' Jones:I am sorry. but the majority of America has spoken. Warm your hearts-open your mind. NO WAR, NO HATE, Embrace MiDDLE CLASS VALUES.
Roger, I am a really good photographer, you need a better picture of yourself! You need to get rid of the bow tie, especially now!
Nov 10, 2008 - 6:44 pm 10. Andre' Jones:#7 Okay what sect will reign? I think your religious statement is silly. Some of them drink red wine, break bread and some of them don’t. None of them get along? Religion which one is #1?
Nov 10, 2008 - 6:58 pm 11. Andre' Jones:How about. All men are created equal? I think that is fair?
Black, white, Hispanic, woman. And of wealth? And of family?
The bible says slavery is okay? If I were a black man, I would think twice about putting my hand on that. If I were a Jew, I would think twice about that. The Bible is not exactly the best recourse of life. The Bibile isn’t the last word, oh no. And as far as truth, it isn’t the last word… WE are 2008.
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Roger, I think you are reading into this far more than necessary. Just because he is black doesn’t mean that he is going to require you to have an Afro.
Nov 10, 2008 - 7:06 pm 12. Robert Hawkins:Black people have been budgeting and trying to balance their budgets forever!
Don’t you think this is going to help this country right now?
Why is there so much HATRED? As I former educator, I can certainly understand how one didn’t do so well in high school. Yet, many of them greatly excelled at the best of colleges.
There is much jealousy going around towards Obama! What makes us think that there are so many idiots in America who could be fooled? Give the man a chance and be FAIR!
Dec 4, 2008 - 4:43 pm 13. Robert Hawkins:Why is there so much HATRED? As a former educator, I have know youngsters who did not do well in high school. Yet, many enrolled in college and greatly excelled.
There is much jealousy going around towards Obamak! What makes some people think that thre are so many idiots in Amrica who could be folled? give the man a chance and be FAIR!
Dec 4, 2008 - 4:47 pm