Okay, so let’s talk about this picture, because it pisses me off. Well, a lot of things piss me off, but incorrect criticism of this president (whom I happen to like) piss me off greatly.
(So just so we’re clear, it’s President Obama standing on the Constitution, surrounded by torn up bits of money, while a working man is down on his luck while the rest of the presidents console him.)
Let’s cover ways in which some of those presidents superseded the Constitution:
George Washington rode out to western Pennsylvania with a full military to goad farmers into paying taxes on whiskey in the Whiskey Rebellion.
John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law (barring criticism of the government in print) and nearly got us into a war with France.
The crowning achievement of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the Louisiana Purchase, was so extra-constitutional the president himself (an advocate of a weaker executive) wasn’t even sure it was legal.
Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1861, fearing riots in Maryland would cause the state to secede from the Union. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Congress wouldn’t even approve of it until 1863.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (this one is a bit of a doozy) tried to pack the Supreme Court with friendly justices, he ran for an unprecedented third term (not technically unconstitutional, but eventually banned in the form of the 22nd Amendment), and he interned Japanese-American citizens by executive order at the start of World War II.
(These last two presidents are usually considered the greatest American presidents in history for handling the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II.)
Ronald Reagan, the Great Saint of the Republican Party, illegally sold weapons to Iran and then used the money to fund anti-communist contras in Nicaragua, also an illegal practice.
We could spend all night talking about the extra-constitutionality of most of George W. Bush’s tenure, from the USAPATRIOT Act to Guantanamo Bay to wiretapping American citizens to torturing prisoners to… well, you get the gist.
And what on earth did Barack Obama do? He… signed health care legislation into law that falls under the purview of the necessary and proper clause as well as the commerce clause of the Constitution.
Hardly the height of impropriety and presidential overreach.
