Patterico's Pontifications

12/29/2010

Obama: I’ll Keep My Promises When It Suits Me to Do So

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:36 am



Obama decried Bush’s signing statements, and badly wishes he could somehow limit them:

During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised that would end if he won. “We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress,” he said. (He has since issued dozens of such statements, but also signaled a desire to limit them.)

I have a great way for Obama to signal a desire to end signing statements: stop issuing signing statements.

Except he has apparently discovered the useful (and indeed necessary) nature of yet another reviled George W. Bush practice.

Criticizing is easy. Governing is hard.

P.S.  Even PolitiFact admits that Obama has broken his promise to wait five days to sign bills.  Apparently there is a way to get him to fulfill that promise on occasion: namely, to send him a bill that he can sign in a nice ceremony to get some good PR:

However, five days after Congress left town, a batch of bills it passed have yet to make it to the White House. They include the defense authorization bill, a food-safety reform measure, and a bill aimed at increasing U.S. competitiveness in science and technology fields, the America COMPETES Act. (See update below)

It’s possible some of those measures have been deliberately slowed in being sent to the president so that he has time to stage a signing ceremony next week.

Promises kept when they are convenient — what could be more admirable than that?

42 Responses to “Obama: I’ll Keep My Promises When It Suits Me to Do So”

  1. I can’t think of a campaign promise about reversing Bush admin policy that Obama has kept. I’m sure there is perhaps a single one, but I can’t think of it this morning.

    It took Obama two years to get Congress to pass a repeal of DADT … but that does not count since it is a Clinton administration policy.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  2. He is working toward the goal when ‘electricity prices would necessarily have to spike’ give him
    time, with the drilling moratorium, and the EPA
    rules.

    narciso (6075d0)

  3. I had completely forgotten about this “issue.” Perhaps it’s because our friends on the left no longer seem to have any complaints about signing statements, and they’ve just dropped out of sight.

    Wonder why that is?

    The Dana who reads liberal blogs (3e4784)

  4. Gitmo was a crime against humanity under Bush. Not so much anymore.

    JD (306f5d)

  5. Am I missing something?

    Signing statements have been around for decades, and typically consists of ceremonial rhetoric. The issue (with Bush) arose when he started saying, as part of some of his signing statements, that he was going to ignore certain sections of law he was signing, or that he would interpret the law to mean X when the bill said Y, etc.

    Obama never desired to end signing statements — he wanted to end the practice of using signing statements to do an end run around Congress. This post suggests that Obama is engaging in that practice.

    But has Obama done this? Where? When?

    Kman (d30fc3)

  6. Never desired to end signing statements, except when he stated as much. I see Santa brought kmart a lump of coal, and a new bag full of mendoucheity.

    JD (6e25b4)

  7. Kman, once again you attempt to present your ignorance of an issue as an argument.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  8. Never desired to end signing statements, except when he stated as much.

    Apparently, some people don’t understand the difference between:

    (a) the desire to end signing statements; and
    (b) the desire to see that signing statements aren’t used as a way to do an end run around Congress.

    I can follow the links in the post and see what Obama is talking about. Is the difference too nuanced for others here?

    Kman (d30fc3)

  9. Public financing of campaigns?

    JD (0d2ffc)

  10. Kman, well since you want to be obtuse, Obama used a signing statement as an “end run around” Congress in the case of H.R. 2701, the “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.” There he used the signing statement to explain basically how he was going to ignore the requirement to explain the legal basis for intel covert action and even quoted from a signing statement from Bill Clinton on a similar provision.

    Hope and change baby.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  11. Kfart is right! A desire is not a pledge. I get the nuance.

    Geesh, at some point you may want to just live over at dCrack.

    vote for pedro (e7577d)

  12. Thank you, SPQR. That’s all I was asking.

    Kman (d30fc3)

  13. I can hardly wait until Sock Puppet Friday. Kman has provided enough material for several hysterical comments.

    vote for pedro (e7577d)

  14. Kman, because you can’t use Google. Check.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  15. Kman, because you can’t use Google.

    I think if one is going to assert that Obama is doing X, a link to an example is particularly helpful (just as was done with the “waiting five days” criticism), especially if the example goes back a few months.

    Kman (d30fc3)

  16. The whole claim that signing statements do an “end run around Congress” ignores the fact that the President himself is effectively a third house of Congress. To become law, legislation must be agreed to by all three houses. Now it’s true that the US constitution, unlike the British one on which it’s based, allows two houses to override the third one; the modern British constitution goes even further, allowing one house not only to override the second but also to compel the third to assent. Still, the principle remains; the President is part of the legislative process, and his opinion on a bill’s meaning is just as relevant as those of the other two houses. Once Congress started including statements of legislative intent into bills, presidents started doing the same by means of signing statements. They fulfill the same function.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  17. Patterico

    i think this is very different from, say, promising to close gitmo. in that case, closing gitmo is actually hard because you have to send the prisoners somewhere.

    By comparison its not hard to keep this promise. just stop doing it. don’t signal a desire to limit them. just don’t.

    the reason why obambi can’t resist doing this is because he is big on executive power. pure and simple.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  18. Once Congress started including statements of legislative intent into bills, presidents started doing the same by means of signing statements. They fulfill the same function.

    Not sure the founders would agree with you there.

    Signing statements have always had a “here’s my two cents” vibe, but increasingly (and especially during Bush), that “two cents” has grown, and now can have actual and substantial impact on the law being signed.

    I don’t blame any chief executive as much as I do Congress. They need to write air-tight bills that say what they mean and mean what they say.

    Kman (d30fc3)

  19. Only on those functions, that facilitate ‘redistribution of wealth’ and ‘community organizing’ the primary functions of state, he is less keen on.

    narciso (6075d0)

  20. Signing statements are still wads of unconstitutional bullshit, whether it’s Obama writing them or Bush. It’s not a president’s place to give a lengthy detailing of their particular janky interpretation of a straightforward piece of Congressional legislation – it’s a president’s place to either sign it (and enforce it as a reasonable man would enforce it), or veto it.

    Leviticus (30ac20)

  21. I’ve got another explanation for the delay in signing. Our New Messiah is out of town eating shaved ice and can’t bother to sign bills in the snow in Washington. When he gets back from the sunshine, he’ll “getrountuit” and sign those pesky bills.

    Mike Myers (0e06a9)

  22. When Obambi talks about using government to steal money and redistribute it to friends of the Democrats (and to establish a totalitarian state), I believe him.

    Otherwise…not too much.

    Dave Surls (586b60)

  23. Kman, the idea that Bush was doing something unique and different from previous Presidents is just Greenwald-quality twaddle.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  24. 5. Am I missing something?
    Comment by Kman — 12/29/2010 @ 7:01

    — A chromosome or two? Blood flow to the brain? A clue?

    Icy Texan (26f046)

  25. “We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress,” [Obama] said. (He has since issued dozens of such statements, but also signaled a desire to limit them.)

    — Whatsamatta U, Mistah Prezident? Some mooch holding a Chicago Machine-gun to your head?

    Icy Texan (26f046)

  26. Comment by Milhouse — 12/29/2010 @ 7:31 am

    Just what part of the Presidency is that “third house of Congress”?
    Is it the CinC/CEO of the Executive Branch, or is it the Chief of State part?

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  27. Comment by Leviticus — 12/29/2010 @ 8:55 am

    Agreed!
    If the President finds things within a bill to disagree with, he should return it unsigned to the Congress stamped with a big red “veto”.
    That is then the occassion for a “non-signing” statement summarizing his disagreement(s) with the contents of the legislation.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  28. “We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress,” he said.

    He’ll just figure out different ways to do that.

    Blacque Jacques Shellacque (e09322)

  29. BJS…
    That’s what all those Czars are tasked to do.
    We could think of them as The Obamuburo.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  30. Oops…
    Obamaburo!

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  31. Oddly enough, I am actually the one that got Politifact to address the signing statements. This was very early on in his Presidency. I went around and around with a lady named Angie for well over 2 months. Even though I had video evidence of his campaign promise, and video evidence of his using the signing statements, her last email to me was that while they acknowledged my findings, they found (some illogical) reason to rate this as a *Compromise*.
    I have the email exchanges. Politifact is a sham.

    sybilll (550902)

  32. In March 2009, President Obama released a Memorandum on Signing Statements in which he stated he would use signing statements to raise constitutional objections to statutory provisions, and not to disregard statutes based on policy disagreements. But even the Washington Independent opined that some of President Obama’s signing statements are “politically questionable.”

    DRJ (d43dcd)

  33. Just what part of the Presidency is that “third house of Congress”?

    The part whose consent is needed for legislation. Look, this is not rocket science. The US constitution is based on the UK constitution (as it existed in the late 18th century); that’s what the founders knew, and the default model with which they tinkered. And the UK Parliament consists of three components: the Queen, the Lords, and the Commons. The same is true of most Westminster-style parliaments, including that of Canada.

    I should also point out that the notion of the strict separation of the three branches of government was utterly unheard of by the founders. It wasn’t invented until a good 50 years or so later. Hence the founders not only had no problem creating the office of Vice President, which is mostly in the legislative branch but partly in the executive, but they also had no problem with Marshall being both Chief Justice and Secretary of State for a month. And for that matter, there was no constitutional reason why Obama and Biden needed to resign from the Senate in order to take their current positions. It would be utterly insane for them to try to do both jobs for any significant period, but there’s nothing in the constitution to prevent it.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  34. Except, “…Unlike many nations, the UK has no core constitutional document. It is therefore often said that the country has an unwritten, uncodified, or de facto constitution.[1] However, the word “unwritten” is something of a misnomer as much of the British constitution is embodied in the written form, within statutes, court judgments, and treaties. The constitution has other unwritten sources, including parliamentary constitutional conventions and royal prerogatives…”-Wikipedia

    Quite frankly, I think you’re attempting to reason out your arse.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  35. Hey, arse, what difference does it make whether it’s written or unwritten? It’s the same constitution either way. And the US constitution was based on it.

    If you want something written, try the Australian constitution, which was based on the UK one as it existed a century later. Some things had changed, but this hadn’t. Chapter 1, paragraph 1 says: “The legislative power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a Federal Parliament, which shall consist of the Queen, a Senate, and a House of Representatives”. Three parts, just like the UK parliament, and just like the US Congress. A law is normally enacted by the consent of all three.

    Milhouse (859b54)

  36. Milhouse, your understanding of the US Constitution is flawed. As an example, the Constitution does have provisions related to the “separation” of powers such as the latter half of Art I sec 6 prohibiting congressmen from being appointed to another office. Amusingly, this was the subject of at least one Obama signing statement.

    There were probably more similarities to the Roman Republic’s constitution than the UK’s constitution of 18th Century. I think your claims are more than a bit strained.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  37. I am once again going to ask commenters whom I like to be more polite to one another (Drew and Milhouse, I’m looking at you — particularly Milhouse).

    Patterico (b75a7e)

  38. Well, I must admit, this is the first time I have ever seen in print someone compare Mr. Madison’s handiwork to something that only exists tangentially, if at all.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  39. Patterico, I return what I am given. SPQR, the founders’ knowledge of the Roman constitution was purely theoretical; the UK constitution was what they were familiar with, and what’s more it was one that they were heavily invested in. Their entire revolution was based on ideas inherent in that constitution; their political philosophy was derived from Locke, Blackstone, et al; they celebrated the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. There can be no doubt that the starting point of their deliberations was the constitution they knew; and nor can there be any question that the legislature they left us with has effectively three houses. They may not have used that language, but the fact is that for a law to be enacted three separate bodies must assent to it, one of them being the head of state. The fact that they allowed two of the bodies to override the third is no more relevant than the fact that in the UK today one of the three legislative bodies can effectively override both of the others.

    As for the separation doctrine, they knew of no such thing. The clause to which you refer is there to prevent conflicts of interest, and is pretty much an exact copy of a provision long-established in the UK at that time. But note that they did not prevent Congressmen from serving as president or vice president, and nor did they prevent judges from also serving in executive office. The greatest proof for this is the fact that Marshall did so, and there is no record of anyone uttering the slightest protest or even raising an eyebrow. (Nor, when his successor as Secretary of State challenged the validity of his own actions in that office, did he feel it necessary to recuse himself!)

    AD-etc, the UK constitution certainly does exist, and existed then, and the USA founders were very much aware of it and all its nuances.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  40. If it exists, where can it be read?

    AD-RtR/OS! (2b454a)

  41. Straining pretty hard to your point, Milhouse.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  42. Patterico, I return what I am given.

    No, you were told you were pulling facts from your ass and responded by calling the accuser an ass. That was more extreme than the provocation. And this was not the first time. But I like you and think you can do better.

    Patterico (1c6e81)


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