President Barack Obama said "good morning" to a Marine guard in the White House today.
The President's comment was sharply criticized by Republican presidential candidates past and present; Tea Party legislators and their extended families; House Speaker John Boehner and his tanning coach; also by Clint Eastwood, Wayne Newton, Kid Rock, Larry the Cable Guy and Willy the Dolphin.
Well, OK. Things are not really as bad as all that. But sometimes folks do get close to begrudging the president his own words. The latest dustup involves the Supreme Court's review of the new national health care law. President Obama said in a news conference he was confident of the law's constitutionality. He said that for the court to find otherwise would, in his opinion, require it to reach into inappropriate judicial activism.
This excited Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who said the comments "crossed a dangerous line." He advised the president to "back off."
I will borrow a phrase and call this pious baloney. (See the collected sayings of Newt Gingrich.)
Tussles between the judiciary and other branches of government are not new. An early sally came from the Supreme Court itself in 1803. Before then, the power of the court to overturn acts of Congress had been considered debatable, as it is nowhere specifically granted in the Constitution. In its landmark Marbury versus Madison ruling, the court formalized the power by seizing it.
Presidents have occasionally clashed with the court since then, notably Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. The court had been mowing down his New Deal legislation. He offered a plan to enlarge the number of justices, which would have let him appoint enough to tip the balance of control. (The plan failed.)
In his news conference remarks, President Obama offered two observations.
-- The legislative branch of government, in passing the law, and the executive in ratifying it, considered it to be in tune with the Constitution.
-- Judges have been known to legislate from the bench, and only another such reach could overturn a law that the president -- who is himself a constitutional lawyer -- considered to be sound.
On the first point, surely we hope and expect that Congress and the President believe in the validity of the laws they enact. On the second, it is simply a fact that several incumbent Supreme Court justices display an immoderate taste for doctrines of their own choosing.
Nonetheless, down toward Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was peeved by the president's comments. Judge Jerry Smith said he thought the president was challenging the authority of the courts to review acts of Congress. He and two colleagues on the bench ordered the Justice Department to produce a memo explaining what the president said.
Attorney General Eric Holder returned a carefully phrased survey of the long settled doctrine of judicial review, which the president had not in any way challenged. The memo made no mention of Mr. Obama's remarks, presumably on the assumption that the president does not need judicial permission to have opinions or to express them.
Under the American system, bumptious judges are like relatives. They must be endured.
Bumptious legislators can be another matter, however. Senator McConnell belongs to a faction in Congress that likes to treat the president of the United States with personal contempt.
This is more than coarse arrogance. Speaking to a magazine about Republican priorities for the 2008-2010 Congress, he said "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Events have since shown us what he meant. The president's enemies -- the word is appropriate -- use the nation's legislature to undermine him and confound the wishes of the voters who sent him to the White House.
If we're to speak of officials who cross inappropriate lines, Senator McConnell's example will suffice for me.
Well, OK. Things are not really as bad as all that. But sometimes folks do get close to begrudging the president his own words. The latest dustup involves the Supreme Court's review of the new national health care law. President Obama said in a news conference he was confident of the law's constitutionality. He said that for the court to find otherwise would, in his opinion, require it to reach into inappropriate judicial activism.
This excited Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who said the comments "crossed a dangerous line." He advised the president to "back off."
I will borrow a phrase and call this pious baloney. (See the collected sayings of Newt Gingrich.)
Tussles between the judiciary and other branches of government are not new. An early sally came from the Supreme Court itself in 1803. Before then, the power of the court to overturn acts of Congress had been considered debatable, as it is nowhere specifically granted in the Constitution. In its landmark Marbury versus Madison ruling, the court formalized the power by seizing it.
Presidents have occasionally clashed with the court since then, notably Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. The court had been mowing down his New Deal legislation. He offered a plan to enlarge the number of justices, which would have let him appoint enough to tip the balance of control. (The plan failed.)
In his news conference remarks, President Obama offered two observations.
-- The legislative branch of government, in passing the law, and the executive in ratifying it, considered it to be in tune with the Constitution.
-- Judges have been known to legislate from the bench, and only another such reach could overturn a law that the president -- who is himself a constitutional lawyer -- considered to be sound.
On the first point, surely we hope and expect that Congress and the President believe in the validity of the laws they enact. On the second, it is simply a fact that several incumbent Supreme Court justices display an immoderate taste for doctrines of their own choosing.
Nonetheless, down toward Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was peeved by the president's comments. Judge Jerry Smith said he thought the president was challenging the authority of the courts to review acts of Congress. He and two colleagues on the bench ordered the Justice Department to produce a memo explaining what the president said.
Attorney General Eric Holder returned a carefully phrased survey of the long settled doctrine of judicial review, which the president had not in any way challenged. The memo made no mention of Mr. Obama's remarks, presumably on the assumption that the president does not need judicial permission to have opinions or to express them.
Under the American system, bumptious judges are like relatives. They must be endured.
Bumptious legislators can be another matter, however. Senator McConnell belongs to a faction in Congress that likes to treat the president of the United States with personal contempt.
This is more than coarse arrogance. Speaking to a magazine about Republican priorities for the 2008-2010 Congress, he said "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Events have since shown us what he meant. The president's enemies -- the word is appropriate -- use the nation's legislature to undermine him and confound the wishes of the voters who sent him to the White House.
If we're to speak of officials who cross inappropriate lines, Senator McConnell's example will suffice for me.
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