I was thinking about how we're struggling in Afghanistan, and how it's really no surprise since we picked a President with a socialist domestic agenda and nothing particularly good to say to the rest of the world about America.
At first I accepted that this is the sort of choice we have to make -- a domestic agenda or a foreign policy agenda. But then I realized that I was falling for a liberal premise: that the federal government is supposed to play any major role in domestic policy. In reality, we have fifty state governments for that -- states who are severely limited in their power to deal with foreign governments, and which are the default government over most domestic matters according to the Tenth Amendment.
I'd been wondering how we're supposed to balance the role of a Commander in Chief against the role of Chief Executive, when it occurred to me that this is a false choice. Constitutionally-speaking, the Presidency is about representing our union of states to the rest of the world. Even if that doesn't call for a military Commander in Chief, it's still primarily a diplomatic task. Even the federal goverment's domestic role is constitutionally just a form of international arbitration over our member states.
By design -- by original intent -- there's just not supposed to be a whole lot for the President to actually be involved with at home. Certainly nothing on the scale of what the states are supposed to be doing -- nothing on the scale of the power they so clearly reserved for themselves when they each ratified the Constitution.
So we have a President neck-deep in what is literally our individual personal business, where he doesn't belong, while our troops in Afghanistan are hanging out to dry without leadership.
The founders would be proud.
Please remember this country voted Barry into office. We as a nation are getting exactly what we asked for. I say we as a Nation, not any one individual since Barry didn't get 100% of the votes. To see how it's working, I was in a bank the other day and Barry was on TV. Two seemingly nice ladies of Barry's ethnic background looked so happy to see him on TV. What I've took away from that moment for now it doesn't matter what Barry does, some people just like him. Now that is scary.
Posted by: hiscross | 10/29/2009 at 10:53 AM
"Two seemingly nice ladies of Barry's ethnic background"
They were half-white, part black African, part Arabs? Wow, what are the odds?
Posted by: cloudbuster | 10/29/2009 at 12:44 PM
I agree. The "so called founders" (to use Barry's terminology) are spinning in their graves so fast now that, if they'd been buried with permanent magnets, we could coil copper windings around their collective caskets and generate electricity. Hey, he just solved the energy crisis.
Posted by: Hank Rearden | 10/29/2009 at 04:39 PM
"They were half-white, part black African, part Arabs? Wow, what are the odds?" Probably, those three segments, plus many more all voted him into office.
Posted by: hiscross | 10/29/2009 at 06:24 PM
To the author:
I wish that, for the purposes of a more complete discussion, and to hopefully propel this mission in the direction of "what can we do?", you would also bring up the GOP (particularly the previous administration). This needs to be addressed. Without that frame of reference, the debate defaults back to Republicans vs. Democrats.
We have to address the GOP's dropping the ball. We have to talk about which potential candidates will be different in 2012.
Otherwise, what's the point?
Posted by: Michael | 10/30/2009 at 06:38 AM