The word imperial has several meanings, but where unrestrained power of a country’s leader is concerned it relates to or suggests an empire or an emperor. The Founding Fathers were well-aware of the dangers of an imperial presidency, and as revolutionaries who detested kings coupled with their great concern that in establishing the United States they did not accidentally create a kingdom, they sharply limited presidential authority. Republicans hardly noticed the imperial presidency of convicted war criminal George W. Bush, or so much as blinked when he issued executive orders. However, when the people elected an African American man to lead the executive branch, every executive order informed them America had fallen into the hands of an imperial President.
According to Republicans, Barack Obama became an imperial President for having the audacity to occupy the White House while being Black, and there has not been one instance of him issuing an executive order that Republicans did not decry “presidential overreach.” On Fox News last year, they claimed the “President planned to spend 2012 governing without Congress as part of Barack Obama’s re-election strategy.” One Fox legal analyst said that the “subtext” of Obama’s use of executive orders is “an abdication or giving up in terms of this notion of consensus.” Newt Gingrich, a presidential candidate at the time, concurred with the Fox brain trust and said, “I am insulted that a president of the United States would think that he could pretend to govern for a year without the Congress; it would be totally unconstitutional, and would represent a fundamental breach in our system.” The breach that drove Republicans to claim President Obama intended to govern an entire year without Congress was issuing executive orders while being Black, and now a cabal of House Republicans is calling for civil action against the President for “moving his administration in the direction of an imperial presidency.”
The Republican leading the charge, Representative Tom Rice (SC), introduced a House resolution directing the Republican-led chamber to bring action for “declaratory or injuctive (sic) relief to challenge policies and actions taken by the executive branch.” Co-sponsors of Rice’s resolution include the regular cast of Obama haters Michele Bachmann, Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Tom Price (R-GA), Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Ted Yoho (R-TX); definitely not the best Constitutional minds in Congress. However, Republicans have hardly shown any comprehension of the Constitution since a Black man, and Constitutional scholar, occupied the White House. Rice and company want the House to take civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for, what else, aspects of the Affordable Care Act as well as the President’s deferred deportation policies for certain immigrants (children brought to America by their parents) they claim are “illegals;” decent Americans call them “undocumented.”
The thinking among Republicans is that this President is forbidden from issuing executive orders and they have indicated on numerous occasions that he is abusing the authority that every other president in the modern-era practiced with impunity. There was even a blatantly outrageous number, over 900, of Obama executive orders that conservatives repeated as if uttered from the mouth of god, but was debunked handily by any American with half-a-brain or access to the readily available Federal Register from the U.S. Office of the Federal Register. The true number of the President’s executive orders is 164, and is the fewest of any president over the past 100 years, but he is Black and it is likely that even one was an abomination in the eyes of racist Republicans and their news outlet Fox News.
Some of the Republicans decrying the President’s use of executive orders alleged the President all but suspended the Constitution and appointed himself emperor, and it drove one to assert that Obama committed impeachable offenses for doing what any white president did as leader of the Executive Branch of government. Libertarian teabagger and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul accused the President of “acting like a king or a monarch,” and South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan declared in January that, “We live in a republic, not a dictatorship.” Evangelical Mike Huckabee who wants to replace the Constitution with the Ten Commandments proclaimed that the Obama White House has “nothing but contempt for the Constitution” and seeks to “trump the checks and balances of power in which no branch could act unilaterally.” Texas congressman Steve Stockman threatened impeachment because a President Obama issued executive orders, but forgot what fellow Texan George W. Bush did while governing without Congress to keep the nation at war with Iraq.
In fact, President Obama has issued far fewer executive orders than his predecessor, George W. Bush that scholars and pundits alike regarded as the man who was an imperial president. Bush issued 287 executive orders during his tenure as warmonger in chief, and in July 2007, the nation headed toward a Constitutional showdown over Bush’s contention that he, and not the United States’ Congress, decided when the nation went to war and how it was funded.
By July 2007 it was common knowledge Bush lied to take the nation to war in Iraq, and as Congress moved closer to passing a bill to limit or end the pre-emptive invasion and subsequent quagmire in Iraq, Bush asserted that Congress did not have the power to stop the war. Bush said in a press conference that “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war, they ought to be funding the troops.” According to the Constitution, not only does Congress have the sole authority to take the nation to war, but it is also in their purview to allocate, or withhold, funds for an illegal war as they saw fit; not what an imperial president dictated. However, the war was hardly the only area where Bush expanded his powers beyond all legal justification, even though taking the nation to war on a lie is the ultimate expression of the danger of an imperial president; something the Founding Fathers understood well. However, in Bush’s case the Founders and their Constitution was firmly on Congress’s side but Bush prevailed, Congress failed, and despite the Constitution the only imperial presidency in the nation’s history kept the nation at war. Now, Republicans are ready to take President Obama to U.S. District Court for issuing an executive order delaying an aspect of the Affordable Care Act that Republicans complained for months did not give business’s time to prepare for changes in the healthcare reform law’s reporting requirements.
The Republicans have several issues going on with accusations President Obama is overreaching his authority in issuing even one executive order. First, he is the legally elected President and it is a fact they cannot accept despite the results of two elections. Second, he is not rolling over and ceding power to Republicans to run the government from the minority and he is not obeying their dictates without question. Third, and likely the heart of the matter, he is an African American they consider an outsider, illegal, not one of them (white), and maybe most importantly he is a real Constitutional scholar who directed the country out of his predecessor’s imperial presidency. Republicans’ hatred for the President inform the calls for impeachment that began within weeks of his first term and continue unabated whether it is over phony scandals, the Supreme Court declaring the Affordable Care Act constitutional, shaking hands with the leader of a foreign government, or dog-forbid; exercising his constitutional right as leader of the Executive Branch to issue executive orders. Something they are certain gives them the right to demand “declaratory or injuctive (sic) relief to challenge policies and actions taken by the executive branch,” and something they never considered when the white guy led the nation to war over a pack of lies.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
- Opinion: Lock Them All Up. Trump’s DOJ Violated U.S. Law By Ignoring His Crimes - Fri, Oct 22nd, 2021
- Opinion: The House Select Committee Can Avoid the DOJ and Arrest Steve Bannon - Mon, Oct 18th, 2021
- Opinion: Steve Bannon Belongs in Prison For Planning Another Violent Coup - Wed, Oct 6th, 2021
