Robert Robb, who wrote this piece, is not some right wing kook. He’s a dammed good columnist. But he’s wrong here.
Presidents wield power comensurate with their experience and expertise. They need that power to handle their myriad responsibilities.
They have no unique right to power. The President is a public servant, not a master. We own the sumbitch. A big part of the job — the predicate move to gain power — is to understand that the power is within the populace, not the executive office.
President Trump can rewrite executive orders, but the nation does not have to let him just rewrite them in whatever way suits him. He does not have the right to rewrite, so to speak.
He does have the power to rewrite. But the judicial system has the power to rescind his rewrite, if they determine that it runs counter to constitutional law.
That’s what happened here. Because of the president’s public displays of racial animosity toward immigrants who were not white, the court ruled that the rewrite was disengenuous and counter to the public interest.
And they were correct. And the next time President Trump tries to repeal President Obama’s actions regarding immigration, chances are they will also be struck down. Because they will run counter to public interest.
The judges were not liberal, and their decison was not based on partisan animosity.
Most judges are centrist, not really liberal or conservative in the terms we are used to thinking in. Brett Kavanaugh, who the democrats tried to paint as to the right of Breitbart, would be considered a blue dog republican by most political candidates, too liberal to run for office as a republican. The so-called left wing of the Supreme Court would all be considered conservative compared to your average liberal political candidate.
The courts are, at least at the moment, the last bastion of centrism in the nation. They would — and did — shut down Obama when he went too far. They shut down Jefferson, they shut down Lincoln and they shut down both Roosevelts when they overreached, while allowing to stand policy moves that they did not deem as counter to the public interest.
We need to stop thinking in terms of rights for powerful people, and responsibilities toward powerful people. The more power a person has, the more responsible he is supposed to be. Power should never be given as a right. Only despots exercise the right to power.
Power is a tool, and a dangerous tool that should never be given to someone untrained in its use. The courts are the nation’s protection against misuse, abuse and inadvertant damaging use.
Trump’s DACA repeal was all three. Untrained in the use of executive power, Trump hamfisted a new policy that was unenforceable, prohibitively expensive and ruinous to millions of tax paying, longterm Americans. He tried to use his executive power to bully it through, selling it to his supporters as racial animosity.
It’s up to you to decide why he is so convinced his supporters are racists, but the point has nothing to do with racism. The man took the job with no experience. The man does not read or listen, so he isn’t learning how to do much of anything; he still has no real experience.
Even more dangerous is that the nation is getting used to him. They don’t remember what it was like when an actual professional ran the country.They don’t remember when we had a president who didn’t brag about everything like a 5-year-old boy.
Over 40 percent of the nation wants Toonces the Driving President to take the wheel and drive us over a cliff. The courts are our last defense.
Robb is a good journalist, and a thoughtful columnist. He just missed the mark this time.
