Checks and Balances

Many years ago, I read a column by George Will, in which he used lots of big words, like he always does, and convinced me about the core of his argument, which was this: The Constitution does not create anything like an imperial presidency, and that Congress--especially the House--is as powerful as the president is. 

Will argued that if the president has become powerful over the years it is because Congress was not doing its job, and was yielding its powers to the president.

I am sure there are enough constitutional scholars and presidential historians who can argue this until the proverbial cows come home.  I have always understood that Congress was powerful; maybe because when I came to the country, Tip O'Neill was a powerful Speaker and everything Reagan wanted to do seemed to need the Speaker's blessings too.

The Speaker became powerful, again, during Obama's tenure, only because the uber-patriotic Republicans did not like to see in the Oval Office a black Muslim who was born in Kenya!  And after they managed to clean up the White House by electing the brave soldier who exposed the Kenyan Muslim's birth certificate, the House and the Senate controlled by his party became the President's toy poodles!

I don't always get to read George Will these days.  Whether or not he agrees with the "Wall" or with Nancy Pelosi (he made sure to let everyone know what he thinks about trump and the GOP) I wonder if he is now happy with how the Speaker is functioning as the President's equal.

The NY Times reports on how trump has been checkmated by the Speaker--and a woman at that!

For a president who prides himself on being a master negotiator, Ms. Pelosi is a different kind of opponent, and one who so far has flummoxed him.

Pelosi "is her own boss" and "under the Constitution, she is a leader of a branch of government that is equal to the chief executive."

She is!

And in the standoff against Madam Speaker, trump has lost, and cannot seem to find a way out of the shitdown mess that he created, and for which he loudly, openly, and gladly claimed the mantle!

Maybe I should look for Will's recent columns to see if he has written about this aspect during this shitdown.

Ah, yes, tomorrow I will return to Jill Lepore's book.

The last bearded American president

It was Benjamin Harrison--the 23rd President.  We have not had a bearded president since the end of the 19th century!

He was a Republican. 

Like the famous bearded President, Lincoln, who was the first ever President to sport a beard, and was also a Republican.

Anyway, other old beards as Presidents?

Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, who seems to have had quite an unkempt beard, and James Garfield ... and all were Republicans.

Not a single bearded Democratic president! 

None, nada, zilch, zippo ...

A few had mustaches.  Seriously, one would have expected the other way around--that bearded presidents would be Democrats.

But, even Uncle Sam sports a beard!

Unfortunately, it does not look like we will anymore have presidents with beards--Republican or Democract.  Why are they so afraid of beards?

Oh well, I suppose it is only Sarah "mama grizzly" Palin who has enough cojones to grow one ... muahahaha

Harvard prepares Presidents, judges, and China's commie leaders?

A follow-up to my earlier post.  Matt Yglesias corrects Niall Ferguson with this simple graphic (HLS is Harvard Law School, and Harvard's business school is HBS)

So, Harvard is tightening its grip on the Executive branch, it has more than a choke-hold on the Judiciary! And they are prowling on Wall Street, too!

Hmmmm ...

If Harvard is that good, well, it should not surprise us then that Harvard "is training the next generation of Chinese Communist Party leaders"

The Harvard curriculum, specially designed for this program, resembles a midcareer executive course. Housed at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center—the same graduate school Bo Xilai’s son attended—Harvard faculty teach Chinese officials leadership, strategy, and public management. Some of the lectures are given by big-name Harvard professors, including Roger Porter and Joseph Nye. Although the classes are restricted to Chinese officials, these party members have ample opportunity to mix with the school’s faculty and general student body. Borrowing from the case-study method made famous at the university’s business school, the coursework zeroes in on specific topics such as U.S. policy and government, how the media operates, negotiation strategy, and even social media. The classroom work is supplemented by site visits to places like the Massachusetts State House, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and larger institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. Besides its main leadership program, which lasts eight weeks, Harvard runs more tailored courses, too. One is focused on crisis management. Another is entirely devoted to the Shanghai municipal government. A new energy program will bring together executives from the China Southern Grid Power Corporation. “The goal is to help the Chinese government work in this environment of globalization,” says Lu. “To catch up.” 

Harvard specially designed a curriculum for this? As Johnny Carson often said, "I did not know that!"  The difference, however, is that this this Harvard story ain't funny. 

BTW, the graphic interests me for another reason: I will add this to my venn diagram collections--well, this be only the third!   The Venn diagrams that my math teacher, Vimala Sitaraman, taught us a long, long time ago :)

Photo of the day: Presidents Day

Caption at the source: WASHINGTON, D.C.—John F. Kennedy visits Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960.

Did JFK tell Eisenhower "I like Ike" ....??? :)

Cartoons of the day: GOP presidential hopefuls

Unfortunately, for those of us who enjoy watching the political theatre, one clown has already withdrawn

Which then begs the question, "one billion dollars, for what?

The marketing of Obama

When I reconnected with a high school friend more than 25 years since graduation, he said that he was into brand management consulting, or something along those lines.  A successful operation he runs.  I bet he will be interested in this piece about how the Obama brand is not seemingly working well:

In his November 2008 essay in the Harvard Business Review, “How Better Marketing Elected Barack Obama,” Quelch cited “Obama's personal charisma, his listening and public speaking skills, his consistently positive and unruffled demeanor and his compelling biography” as components of a brand that “attracted the attention and empathy of voters.” He added that “Obama chose an excellent marketing and campaign team, and managed them well. From start to finish, there was no public dissension.”
But nearly two years later, the marketing challenge for President Obama is far more complicated than for candidate Obama. ...
Quelch warns that “after you are elected, you are only as good as the product and performance you deliver, and the brand promise has to be lived up to. If the promise has been very substantial and the performance has been average, that’s going to put you in a bigger hole than if the promise was modest and the performance has been average. Individual citizens run, if you like, a gap analysis on promise versus performance.”

"You lie": Saturday Night Live explains what happened

Is it President-Elect McCain or Obama?

So let’s get this straight: Robert Gates will be the Defense Secretary, we’re ramping up U.S. forces in Afghanistan and providing a reasonable period of time for a hand-off in Iraq, there isn’t going to be a windfall oil profits tax or income tax hike but there is going to be a huge set of business tax cuts – and Rick Warren is giving the invocation at the Inauguration. Who won in November?

I’m sure there will be times during the next four years when the Obama administration’s decisions on issues (e.g. judicial appointments) have conservatives banging their heads against the wall, bemoaning the fact that John McCain wasn’t elected. But so far it’s hard to imagine McCain would have been doing more than the incoming Obama team seems to be proposing — and with as much chance of success –to further some key center-Right policy aims.

Hmmmm.... Jennifer Rubin has a great observation there.

Presidential debates on HBO and Cinemax?

Was There Too Much Sex And Profanity In The HBO Presidential Debate?

Hey, how about the Congress?

I watched George Will interviewed by David Broder on C-Span's BookTV. While Will's ideological commitment is not quite what I agree with, he made a wonderful observation during the interview: that we are obsessing with the presidential elections, so much so that we set up any candidate to fail as the president, once elected. Further, the presidency is only one of the three branches of the government. To quote Will, "the presidency is not the heart of the matter." Which means, we ought to pay a lot of attention to the Congressional elections too.

Click here to watch the interview online. Advance to 28 minutes for his comments on the executive power.

So, what is being projected at the Congressional level at the November elections? The Cook Political Report has a great deal of info on this.

A secret presidential succession plan? OMG!

Bruce Ackerman, who authored this piece in Slate.com, is no consipracy theory nut case. He is a law professor at Yale. And, slate.com is no National Inquirer.
Which is why his commentary is troubling and terrifying. Apparently there have always been rumors that Reagan put into play some kind of a presidential succession executive order that will bypass our understanding that the speaker of the House will be the one after the VP. But, how can something like this ever be done in a democracy? A president creating his own succession plan as if it were a monarchy? Bizarre, and eerie.

Anyway, Ackerman concludes his comments with:
If Reagan did issue an illegal order, Congress should publicly determine how subsequent administrations dealt with it. Perhaps President George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton expressly repudiated the order. Or perhaps they reaffirmed it, thereby laying the foundation for President Bush, with the encouragement of Vice President Cheney, to do the same—through a process entirely independent of the administration's formal directives on the subject.

In any event, it is time for Congress to find out. Even if Reagan's initial illegal order has been rescinded, Congress must deprive it of all value as a precedent. Lawmakers should pass legislation that expressly nullifies all secret orders, present and future, through which the president asserts the imperial privilege of naming his own successor.