Obama's Legacy of Overreach
The liberal media is beginning to
talk about Obama’s legacy – a sure sign that he doesn’t have one. What he
does have is a negative legacy – a record of unconstitutional overreach
that matches or exceeds that of any president before him. History has not
been kind to presidents who overstep the bounds of authority, and it will not
be kind to Obama.
This administration is not the first
to have overreached. Early in his first term, FDR set up the NRA
(National Recovery Administration), the WPA (Works Progress Administration),
and other agencies with the mandate of regulating the national economy,
including comprehensive regulation of prices and wages. These actions
were struck down by the Supreme Court in one case after another. In
response, in 1937 Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court with additional
judges, an outrageous overreach that was also rebuffed by Congress and by the
American people. FDR’s reputation was tarnished, though not entirely
spoiled.
But no president so much resembles
Obama as Woodrow Wilson. Like Obama, Wilson was personally cold,
arrogant, and remote. Wilson was also imperious in his dealings with
Congress, once proclaiming that if Congress opposed his decision on the League
of Nations provision of the Versailles Treaty, they would have to shut up and
“take their medicine” (Patterson et al, American Foreign Policy, 3rd
ed., vol. 2, p. 28). Like Obama, Wilson had negotiated the details of the
Versailles Treaty in secrecy, and he refused to share them with members of
Congress even after returning from the negotiations. Congress acted
wisely in refusing to ratify the treaty, which, as finally presented, included
in Article X the stipulation that obligated the United States to deploy forces
to defend all other members of the League, even without the approval of
Congress.
Again and again, Wilson attempted to
bypass Congress, acting as if he were the “personal instrument of God.”
Those are not my words – they are Wilson’s (Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow
Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography, 316). Obama displays
the same unwillingness to compromise or even to talk with opponents, along with
the same narcissistic self-assurance.
When the GOP majority in the Senate
balked at Article X and other details of the Versailles Treaty (which Wilson
had negotiated without input from the leaders of either party), Wilson set off
on a nationwide speaking tour in order to sway public opinion. The
similarity to Obama’s handling of the Iran treaty is striking. Expect
Obama to take the issue to the public if and when the Senate balks at the
details of his disastrous giveaway.
At the end of his second term, Woodrow
Wilson left office in disgrace, his League of Nations proposal rejected, the
economy sinking into a deep recession, and relations with Congress literally
nonexistent. When he died just after the landslide election of his
Republican successor, Wilson’s Democratic vice president was so fearful of
public opinion that he refused to be sworn in. The country drifted for
months without a president in office (and none the worse for it). The
Republicans who succeeded Wilson, Harding and Coolidge, went on to become two
of America’s most popular presidents, enjoying overwhelming support during
their eight years in office. By 1928, the Wilson years were, for most
Americans, a painful memory of war, inflation, and presidential overreach.
There are signs that Obama’s legacy
won’t be very different. Far from gaining support, his FY2016 budget proposal was such
an exercise in fantasy that it was not even discussed by the press. No
one, even among those in his own party, stepped forward to support it. It
arrived on Capitol Hill like an unwelcome fruitcake, tossed out before it was
even sampled.
Obama’s Iran treaty may well be the
centerpiece of his second term, and like Wilson’s League proposal, it is likely
to fail. Either it will not be ratified by the Senate, or it will be
approved in some revised form that will nonetheless be disastrous to the future
of the Middle East. Either way, it won’t serve Obama’s legacy.
When one looks at photographs of
Wilson late in his second term, one sees a haggard, stiff-necked, antagonistic
old man. Even at the nadir of his presidency, Wilson remained haughty and
overconfident, closer to a dictator than anything we have seen in this country
before or since. And he was not just arrogant – he was delusional.
Communicating only through his wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, he let it
be known that he would accept the nomination for an unprecedented third term
and sat up during his party’s convention, waiting for his orders to be carried
out. When the 1920 convention nominated James M. Cox instead, and Cox was
defeated, Wilson assumed that he, Wilson, would be the candidate in 1924.
Let us hope that Obama is not quite that delusional.
Like Wilson, Obama has become
increasingly inflexible in his second term, especially since the congressional
election of 2014. That election was a mandate for the GOP, but Obama
seems to regard it as giving him free rein to govern by executive order.
This overreach is a serious miscalculation, and one that will damage his
party for decades to come. The American people are tired of Obama’s
dictatorial exercise of power, and they yearn for a leader who will act in an
open and forthright manner, and who will respect the constitutional limits of
his office. That sounds more like Scott Walker than Hillary Clinton.
Obama
has spoiled it for his party in 2016 and probably for a decade to come.
The public’s image of Woodrow Wilson after he left office was that of a
priggish, imperious autocrat, utterly incapable of compromise or even
discussion. After Wilson left office, his progressive vision of an
all-powerful executive was overturned. While the IRS, the Federal Trade
Commission, and the Federal Reserve Bank – Wilson’s gifts to the American
people – remained in place, government expansion was slowed and spending
curtailed. Most of all, Wilson was remembered as a disagreeable leader
who made enemies wherever he went. He seemed to be constitutionally
incapable of working with others.
Barack Obama’s legacy won’t be far
off. Of course, the liberal media will go into overdrive polishing his
image and touting his grand “accomplishments.” But what would those be?
Obamacare and an economy still operating at negative growth rates?
An Iran treaty that puts the survival of Israel and of the United States
at risk? A war on coal, regulatory overkill of the energy sector, and
climate change proposals for 2025 that would shut down one quarter of the
economy? For most Americans, the Obama years will be an ugly memory –
years when government regulated every sector of the economy, and the public
suffered for it.
The years to come may well resemble
the Roaring Twenties that followed Wilson’s misguided presidency – the greatest
expansion of free markets and prosperity in our nation’s history. The
Obama presidency is already something that most of us would like to forget.
His legacy is nothing less than the failed overreach of an arrogant and
delusional autocrat.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many
books on American politics and culture, including Heartland
of the Imagination (2011).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/obamas_legacy_of_overreach.html#ixzz3WzdNxS2i
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