Monday, March 21, 2011

Another presidential promise swirls down the drain

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"

...

"As President, I will not assert a constitutional authority to deploy troops in a manner contrary to an express limit imposed by Congress and adopted into law."

Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, December 20, 2007, questioned in a Boston Globe interview about the possibility of his having to bomb Iran should he be elected.

Say what you will about President George W. Bush and the wisdom of invading Iraq (we didn't agree with the decision much either), but he at least sought and received Congressional approval before embarking on that course of action.  Dear Leader simply took a few minutes out of his latest vacation in Rio to let us know about his "unilateral authorization" via a "presumptuous and flippant" radio announcement rather than a serious Oval Office address like President Bush chose to deliver in 2003.

Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner, who authored the above description of the president's quiet little weekend aside, further expounds on the president's pattern of shattering his campaign vows:

"This is a president who has repeatedly shredded the clear meaning of words in order to deny breaking promises he has clearly broken -- consider his continued blatant falsehoods on tax increases and his hiring of lobbyists."

It's nice to see that mainstream journalists are now finally beginning to notice that the Emperor is strutting around quite starkers.  When will Dear Leader's legions of star-struck supporters (many of whom specifically voted for him because of his constant bashing of Bush on the war issue and his self-promotion as a person who wouldn't engage in the same sorts of acts) do the same?

1 comment:

Ken Hood said...

And an unintended consequence of all of this is a slowly growing (ok it's embryonic) reaching out across the aisle of Libertarians and Far Left folks. How ironic... the President needed to act like Bush II on steroids before the Left realized that he's "just another politician" and quite frankly, not a very good one.

You are spot on... at least Bush (and Clinton before him) tempered their power with the appearance that they did not have Constitutional authority to declare war unilaterally.

As much I get a "quick emotional high" seeing the Mad Dog of Libya get shelled... this unilateral shooting of "bad guys we don't like" kinda has to stop... or are only "far right and far left" folks the ones who see this?