As you may recall, we tend to reserve the "pure gold" descriptor for uniquely egregious instances of Obama hypocrisy. This one surely qualifies. American Commitment clips a stump speech snippet from 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama, scrupulous defender of our constitutional structure, and righteous critic of executive power grabs. Behold:
“I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that were facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”
What can you even say at this point? Here is a man who, as a lame duck president, is openly vowing to thwart, ignore, and bypass Congress whenever possible. Here is a man whose administration has made more than two dozen on-the-fly changes to a law duly passed by Congress, without offering even the faintest sniff of a compelling legal justification for some of the most brazen alterations. Here is a man who asked for new lawyers when he didn't like his team's legal analysis regarding the limits of his power in unilateral foreign interventions. Here is a man who ordered an executive action for which he'd explicitly stated he didn't possess the authority 15 months earlier. This is a man who leftist law professor Jonathan Turley describes as "the president that Richard Nixon always wanted to be." Turley, who's been extremely critical of this administration's various power plays -- which he says easily surpass Bush's transgressions -- built his case against Obama's imperial presidency on Fox News last night. "The framers would be horrified:"
"I'm afraid this is beginning to border on a cult of personality for people on the left, [and] I happen to agree with many of President Obama's policies. But in our system, it is often as important how you do something as what you do."
"Beginning." Sure. Americans aren't nearly as supportive of Obama's policy initiatives as Turley is, but they share his balance-of-power concerns. A new Fox News poll tells the story:
Note well that although fully 74 percent of the public understands that Obama's actions betray the manner in which our government is supposed to function, only 60 percent disapprove of them. That gap is filled by hardcore, ends-justify-the-means, undemocratic sycophants -- also known as the aforementioned cult of personality. And these are the same people who spent 2001 to 2009 screeching about Bush's powers run amok.