In every presidency there is always a
The defining moment, an act, action, or occurrence that can be marked as the most historically significant for that president. No president escapes it, and many presidents have tried hard, post presidency, to redefine themselves, as well as that single thing that stands out, for in the end it is that thing that most defines their presidency and who they are in the eyes of history.
Ask some random pedestrian “What was Abraham Lincoln known for?” and the usual response will be, “He freed the slaves.” Of course the second most popular answer what that “He was assassinated,” followed next by, “Isn’t he the guy of the five?” Other events come to peoples minds as well, such as, “He had a beard,” or “He beat the South,” and someone will remember that he delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history, “The Gettysburg Address.” All are significant, but in the end, he freed the slaves, although more indelible and important, he preserved the union (beat the South). George Washington of course was our first president and founding father, and everyone gets that right, followed by beat the British, chopped down a cherry tree, and finally – couldn’t tell a lie, although the last two acts are related and most certainly a fable.
President Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, not while in office of course, but nonetheless a crowning achievement, and that’s what most people say when queried. Of greatest significance to his presidency no doubt was the Louisiana Purchase, which does however share some significance, coincidentally, with the current occupant of the White House. More on that later, but that does lead to defining presidential achievements that are a bit more dubious, and that their purveyors would most absolutely wish to erase from history’s memory.
The aforementioned president’s would probably accept their respective distinctions, and agree, yet one can imagine with only a nod and perhaps a hint of modesty. On the flip side, Bill Clinton would never want to be remembered for Monica Lewinsky and the layer upon layer of deceit, or outright lies that came with his denial and ultimate impeachment. Nor would Richard Nixon relish the fact that he is most remembered for Watergate and the only president thus far to resign in disgrace from the highest office of the land.
Besides Clinton, in the modern era, that is to imply the last 25 years, Ronald Reagan crushed the Soviet Union and told Gorbachev to tear down the wall. George H.W. Bush kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, and George W. Bush is defined by an event not of his doing, but by that of terrorists and the all invasions and actions associated with 9/11. So what about Barack Obama?
The single defining moment of his presidency thus far, and everything that it perpetuates is an act, and one that he really did not even author, and most certainly never read, but more assuredly has his name forever attached to it – “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010,” 2500 pages of horse trading and sausage making, including the “Cornhusker Kickback,” and this administration’s version of the “Louisiana Purchase,” otherwise from now on known pejoratively as “Obamacare.” Signed into law on March 23, 2010 the law has been assailed on all fronts by a majority of the country, yet championed by the administration in a double down embrace that may leave Mr. Obama with a permanent albatross around his neck and here’s why – it’s a terrible law and barely ambulatory after the Solicitor General’s oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court. In fact probably won’t survive his presidency, which he should only pray that to occur for posterity’s sake. For Mr. Obama though, the law resulted in immediate scorched earth with the Democrats losing the House majority in the midterm elections of 2010 by the worst landslide in 70 years, even as a number of Democratic congressmen ran for re-election touting their “no” vote for Obamacare. The writing was on the wall.
The negative reaction to the law was hardly a surprise, however from the get go the administration felt that they just weren’t explaining it properly, which was rather difficult before being passed since they hadn’t read it. Who can forget the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the time remarking to reporters “We’ll know what’s in it after it’s passed.” Huh?
The health care reform debate has quite a background to say the least and had been a major campaign issue for the Democratic contenders during the 2008 presidential primaries, and after his election Mr. Obama pledged that health care legislation would be one of his four major priorities upon taking office. The goal was very doable considering the fact that the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and held a super majority in the Senate. Where would the push back come from then? Remember all those town hall meetings and the birth of the Tea Party?
An initial version of the House bill was passed by a narrow vote of 220-215, the measure containing an individual mandate requiring all citizens to purchase health insurance, a great deal for insurance companies. The Senate however introduced a bill of its own and thus began the devious backroom amendment deals, one Medicaid reimbursement agreement infamously dubbed the “Cornhusker Kickback” in order to secure Nebraska Senator Bill Nelson’s vote, and another $300 million Medicaid federal reimbursement compact derided the “Louisiana Purchase” in order achieve a “yes” from Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. A filibuster was averted, or a least one led by a Democrat, however Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown’s special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat deprived the Democrats of the super majority. Health care was dead, or so it seemed, until that is, the Senate deemed it a law in reconciliation after the House passed it by a margin of seven votes, the individual mandate firmly in place. The proverbial fan immediately began to get hit from all sides.
The negative public opinion and skepticism was well deserved as the law failed to do most that was promised. Health care premiums were not reduced, but in fact they have gone up. As determined initially via creative accounting provided from the administration, the CBO calculated it would reduce the deficit by $100 billion over ten years, but instead it now calculates it will explode, mostly due to unfunded new entitlements and price inflation never baked into the original numbers. But it was the question of the constitutionality of the law that drew the most fire. A full 72% percent of all registered voters believed the individual mandate aspect of the law to be unconstitutional and 50% to 39% believed that the Supreme Court should strike the whole thing down. Many legal scholars and a number of jurists agreed.
State after state filed law suits challenging the law, including a 26 state joint attack to overturn the individual mandate, and failing severability, cause the entire law to be tossed. In essence what the Attorneys General from all these states were saying was that forcing an individual to buy insurance under threat of a fine if they didn’t, exceeded Congress’s authority to regulate commerce. In an extremely well thought out decision, “"extremely deep in its discussion of principles and constitutional doctrine," a Federal Judge in Florida agreed, declaring in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services the law’s individual mandate unconstitutional. Judge Vinson also noted that the individual mandate wasn’t severable therefore the entire law would become overcome by events – OBE.
Oral arguments to the Supreme Court on behalf of the law did not go well for the administration, the train wreck of arguments by the Solicitor General Verrilli, punctuated with nervous coughs and stuttering causing many experts to predict that the court would in fact strike down Obamacare. Verrilli was peppered with questions form the high court, Justice Scalia starting the onslaught wondering if exercise club memberships should be mandated, since, exercising is good for your overall health:
"The something else is everybody has to exercise, because there's no doubt that lack of exercise cause -- causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up. So the federal government says everybody has to -- to join a -- an exercise club. That's -- that's the something else."
Chief Justice Roberts was curious as to whether or not the government could require individuals to own cell phones:
“Well, the same, it seems to me, would be true say for the market in emergency services: police, fire, ambulance, roadside assistance, whatever. You don't know when you're going to need it; you're not sure that you will. But the same is true for health care. You don't know if you're going to need a heart transplant or if you ever will. So there is a market there. To -- in some extent, we all participate in it. So can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? You can just dial 911 no matter where you are?”
Justice Alito asked another very interesting hypothetical of Verrilli regarding the requirement to buy a burial plot causing further stammering:
“Suppose that you and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour and we found a couple of healthy young people and we stopped them and we said: You know what you're doing? You are financing your burial services right now because eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're going to shift the cost to somebody else.”
It was Justice Anthony Kennedy however, that Mr. Obama should have the most concern with, and which makes the president’s statements earlier last week that much more perplexing. The noted swing vote of the court engaged Verrilli unequivocally, stating that forcing an individual to purchase insurance notably changes the relationship between the federal government and its citizens.
“Here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.”
Justice Kennedy’s questioning seemed to strongly suggest that he would vote in favor of overturning the individual mandate, resulting in a 5-4 decision against Obamacare. And perhaps Mr. Obama sensed the tide had turned. But had it really? Quite often the line of questioning from the Supreme Court doesn’t necessarily accurately forecast the body’s final ruling. At least that’s what liberal pundits are pushing in their spin of the three days of arguments. Maybe Mr. Obama didn’t get that memo though, as the former constitutional law professor had a spin of his very own, as well as a new take of the Constitution’s checks and balances established with the three branches of government. The president wasted no time in challenging the court, and doing so with blatant inaccuracies on the glaring stage of the White House lawn.
“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.”
Mr. Obama couldn’t have been more wrong on both instances. Seven votes is a far cry from a strong majority and since Marbury v. Madison in 1803 the Supreme Court overturning a law enacted by Congress has 156 precedents. Yet the president didn’t stop there, the so-called “walk back” on the following day had the appearance of a doubling down, with the president implying judicial activism should the court strike the law down and lamenting the court to do the right thing since so many people were affected by the law, in other words, the ends justifying the means regardless of the Constitution. Blasting “unelected officials” served to ignite the rancor of those appointed for life across the country, resulting in a jurist of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to require the United States Attorney General to produce a three page, single spaced opinion paper of the Justice Department’s view on Judicial Review, and due in 48 hours.
Why would Mr. Obama take such a stance, and do so with obvious rancor, poking at the eye of Justice Kennedy, the vote that many think would be Obamacare’s only hope, saying that the court had the heavy burden of doing the right thing and ruling the law constitutional. Wait a second, isn’t that exactly what Justice Kennedy had said, but in reference to the lawmakers, not the bench? Maybe, just maybe, one of the four liberal members of the court, one of their clerks perhaps, had tipped off the White House as to what the vote would probably be, and therefore the president was only building up his argument two months in advance of the announcement of the decision sometime in June.
Again, Mr. Obama could only be so fortunate in this election year to have the albatross lifted from his neck, the signature achievement of his administration being an example of the overreach of the executive branch, enabling a despot to dictate every aspect of a citizen’s life. It was after all liberal Justice Breyer who while aiding the hapless Solicitor General suggested that by the virtue of being born, “one enters the health care market place.” Yet the plaintiff’s lawyer Michael Carvin brilliantly replied that that would mean that Congress was omnipotent, and authorized the Commerce Clause to “regulate every activity” of a person’s life from cradle to grave. The crowning achievement of the Obama presidency was looking to be in serious jeopardy indeed, and the administration had no contingency plan they said, other than citing judicial activism and unelected officials striking down laws, which is exactly what the hypocritical Obama administration is asking courts to do in its efforts to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed in the Senate by 85-14 and the House by 342-67, a true overwhelming majority.
The president’s singular achievement is perhaps doomed regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, as its looking more and more likely that he will be voted out of office in the fall as the economy has always been the nation’s biggest concern since Mr. Obama took office, and even more so back in 2009 when Mr. Obama went down the path of shoving Obamacare down the country’s throat. Americans weren’t looking for a sixth of the economy to be thrust into upheaval while the nation was in a deep recession and unemployment at 10% (real unemployment closer to 15%), and fuzzy math aside, remains pretty much the same today. Should the law be repealed by a new president, or struck down before that event by the Supreme Court, what would be the notable achievement of the 44th president of the United States? Would it be Solyndra? Maybe finally getting UBL? He will most certainly always be the first African American president in this nation’s history, an indisputable, progressive fact, but that still won’t be the thing that stands out the most. After Obamacare, should it become simply an asterisk, Mr. Obama has another very notable achievement, and that’s to adding more to the national debt in one term of a presidency than all presidents before him – combined. We salute you.
Excellent post!
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