Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Defining Constitutional Deviancy Down

Instead of a nation of laws, we could slowly devolve into a nation of diktats, with each president relying on and revoking different measures on the basis of unilateral power — creating unstable swings from one presidency to the next. If President Obama enacts this order on the transparently flimsy basis of “prosecutorial discretion,” he’s inviting future presidents to use similarly flimsy criteria. Talk about defining constitutional deviancy down.

Read the rest of the David Brooks column here.

2 comments:

LA Grant said...

How the fawning have fallen. This is a golden hit from Brooks' past:

"That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”"

Falling in love/infatuation with a politician always reminds me of the naif who falls for a fille de joie hoping for the best of outcomes and not realizing that that will prove to be a sore head and broken heart.

I won't even question Brooks questionable use of 'manhood,' a term I doubt he has much familiarity with on a practicing level.

Basically, where in the hell was he when the pragmatists saw this coming?

Michael Wade said...

Larry,

The "perfectly creased pant leg test" never struck me as a good benchmark.

Michael