Ignorance Is Not Bliss

I was having breakfast with a friend this week when the subject of President Obama’s unscripted comments about the Supreme Court came up. If you are not a political junkie, you may not have heard what the President said at a news conference Monday last. In the interest of fairness, I will quote his remarks in full.

In answer to a reporter Obama said, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”

The next time I need a definition for the word “disingenuous” I will drag this out. It would also make a pretty good sample of political irony. It is inconceivable to me that our President does not realize how completely phony his judgment sounds. I know this same argument was used in 2000 when the Supremes stole the presidency from Al Gore, but other than that, it is always the progressives on the courts who are overturning laws passed democratically.

Then there is the Presidential audacity to say the health care reform law was “passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Perhaps he meant to say by a Democrat majority, which is quite different from calling it democratically elected majority. Surely he cannot have forgotten the outrage across the country, the birth of the Tea Party, the groundswell of democratic electors who opposed the measure.

Maybe President Obama is actually ignorant of the proper role of the Court in a three branch system, as astounding as that seems given his training as a lawyer. Ed Rogers, a conservative blogger at the Washington Post (yes, they have one) wrote in response: “ His [Obama’s] comments indicate that he still grapples with how to handle the presidency and that we’re still witnessing the on-the-job training required when you elect a part-time state senator and a “community organizer” as president of the United States.” I wonder if the President is not in training, but rather is trying to remake the government in his image. I wonder if the balance of powers  so wisely instituted by the founders is an impediment to his agenda, so he seeks to demolish it. It is the check and balance system which has kept human deviousness (aka sin) from destroying what we have.

I am quite sure President Obama is not ignorant; I think he knows exactly what he is doing. If he succeeds, it will be because we the people are ignorant. We are ignorant of the real beauty of constitutional government and what its loss will mean to those who love what America has been for two hundred plus years. At breakfast my friend suggested we need to stop harping about all this founding fathers stuff and make the argument more relevant; people do not care about constitutionality any more, he said. I say just the opposite; we need to re-educate people about how unique our Constitution is; we need to make people understand why the founding fathers are still relevant to today. Failing that, I fear we will end up with Obama’s vision of a changed America. Not a change for the better in my humble opinion.