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April 03, 2008 07:04 am
Separation of powers?
“We have a tendency to overreact when we feel threatened. Al-Qaida is a threat but so was the Soviet Union with its military parity. No president asserted the authority that has been asserted today."
By Andy Rieger
CNHI News Service
NORMAN, Okla. — Mickey Edwards is worried.
The former Congressional representative from Oklahoma City is concerned that the Constitutional system he worshipped and studied is gradually being eroded and few Americans have stepped up to express similar sentiments.
It’s gotten to the point that the president himself doesn’t feel obligated to follow laws passed by Congress, Edwards said.
“If Lyndon Johnson would have done these things and the Democratic Congress had supported him, the conservative movement that I belong to would have been marching in the streets,” Edwards told a University of Oklahoma audience Wednesday afternoon.
The eight-term Oklahoma congressman, now a lecturer at Princeton University, delivered the Josh Lee Lecture inside Meacham Auditorium. The biennial lectureship is supported by Mary Louise Symcox, the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Josh Lee and a longtime Norman resident.
Edwards singled out instances where President Bush has overstepped authority and not been challenged by the other branches. A journalist’s review of the 2006 appropriations passed by Congress showed the executive branch didn’t carry out the wishes in a third of the cases audited.
He said the White House routinely issues “signing statements” when affirming legislation that they don’t agree with, basically saying they don’t like the legislation and they don’t have to carry it out.
“Not one member of my party sees anything wrong with the president of the United States saying 'I don’t have to follow the law,'” Edwards said.
He said he was deeply worried about the question of whether the Constitution really matters any more.
“We are in danger of seeing the Constitution as just another interesting piece of history,” he said.
“When this country was founded, our founders did something that had never been done before in a nation state ... What makes us exceptional was the very kind of government we had.”
Before the Constitution was adopted in 1787, Europeans had rulers and subjects. “What they (the founders) said was this: We are not going to be subjects.”
Edwards said the heart of the American Constitution was Article 1, giving the power to make laws to the Congress. They alone could go to war, raise taxes and spend money.
“All of those powers were deliberately withheld from the president of the United States,” he said.
He singled out the mass firings of U.S. attorneys and the fallout when the president’s chief of staff and legal counsel claimed immunity and refused to honor Congressional subpoenas to discuss the dismissals. Republican members of Congress walked out to keep from having to vote on finding the two in contempt.
Edwards recalled a time when President Ronald Reagan asked the Republican majority in Congress to support him on a matter and two-thirds of them went back to Capitol Hill and voted against him.
“We knew we were members of Congress and not members of the White House staff,” Edwards said.
He described his orientation as a new Congressional representative. He was not expected to uphold the Constitution. He was expected to raise more money from lobbyists in order to elect more Republicans and defeat more Democrats.
Edwards recalls bringing amendments to the House floor for nothing other than to make Democrats look bad back home if they had to vote on them.
He said he has fears about terrorists harming the country but the United States has a history of overreacting.
“We have a tendency to overreact when we feel threatened. Al-Qaida is a threat but so was the Soviet Union with its military parity. No president asserted the authority that has been asserted today. We’ve been through this before on worse threats.”
Andy Rieger writes for The Norman (Okla.) Transcript.
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