The modern Democrat party has been captured by people who propose ideas and make promises based on the assumption that the President has unlimited power and authority to implement any idea. And it absolutely does not matter if said idea is or is not authorized by the Constitution. They simply don’t care.
For illustration we picked just one of several examples from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech. But first a brief review of Article II of the US Constitution, establishing the Presidency and granting to the President certain limited powers and obligations.
- Commander in Chief of the US Military
- With the Advice and Consent of the Senate the President has the power to:
a) make treaties, provided that two thirds of Senators concur;
b) Appoint Principle officers of executive branch departments such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, Ambassadors, Federal Court Judges, and Supreme Court Justices;
- The power to appoint people to such lower level offices as Congress creates without the advise and consent of the Senate;
- The power to veto legislation passed by Congress. But Congress can override a Presidential veto with two-thirds vote of both houses. The Constitution does not give the President the power to enact laws.
- The power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States
- The obligation to “take care” that laws enacted by Congress “be faithfully executed.” In other words, the President oversees the management of the departments of government to ensure that laws enacted by Congress are implemented and obeyed.
Obviously, the last obligation is enormous, especially in the modern era after Congress has created scores of departments and agencies that were never authorized by the Constitution, to redistribute income and to regulate nearly every facet of American life.
The Constitution does not delegate any other powers or responsibilities to the President and most of the powers the executive branch does wield through the panoply of departments and agencies were never authorized by the Constitution. The founders sought to LIMIT the scope of federal government power to just a few specific functions in order to leave the states and the people free to conduct their own lives without federal intervention. With that in mind consider the following excerpt from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic Convention:
Make no mistake about it, this November, when we get to the polls, this is what we are deciding. Not Democrat or Republican, not left or right. In this election, and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives. In this election, there is only one person who I trust with that responsibility, only one person who I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is our friend Hillary Clinton.
Keep in mind that these remarks were not the “off the cuff” adlibs Mr. Trump is famous for. The First Lady read her speech from the teleprompter. It was painstakingly prepared with the help of the most skilled speech writers the Democrats can can find. Every word was considered and reconsidered by the White House, the Democrat Party and the Clinton Campaign.
So, we have to conclude that Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and the party elites believe, and want us to believe and accept, this assertion that it is the job of a President to “shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives.” Your children, your neighbor’s children, other children in your extended family, approximately 60 million children and teenagers are each the personal responsibility of the President.
And by the way, The President is also Commander of 1.4 million men and women who make up the US Military, and another 1.4 million civilian employees of the government!
Obviously, investing “the power to shape our children” in one person is utterly preposterous. Of course the authors of the Constitution never considered such an outrageous idea because it’s simply impossible to implement. But the Democrats want you to believe it’s somehow plausible for the President to shape your children and all the other 60 million children in America. And, that is a primary reason the First Lady gave you, at a dramatic moment in her speech, to thunderous applause from the assembled delegates, to elect Mrs. Clinton! See, she knows children, or likes children, or cares about children or something.
For more than a century the Progressive movement, represented by the Democratic Party has systematically violated the Constitution by adding unauthorized powers and functions to the federal government. Most are attempts to implement the core progressive principle that elite experts, armed with governmental power to tax and regulate by force, can make us better.
When in control of Congress progressives have created scores of department and agencies that are patently Unconstitutional because they have within themselves all the powers the founders deliberately dispersed among the three, separate branches of Government:
- Legislative,
- Executive,
- Judicial.
Most government expansion is sold to the public with blatantly emotional appeals. Some of those appeals seem to make a bit of sense. But most are, like Mrs. Obama’s notion that a President could, even if he or she wanted to, “shape our children” utter nonsense.
