Now that Obama’s reign is coming to an end, many of his loyal subjects are having a change of heart about presidents having so much power.
The YouTube channel “We The Internet” recently uploaded a video (below) titled “So NOW You’re Worried About Executive Power?” that perfectly sums up Leftist hypocrisy on presidential authority.
The clip’s description reads:
An Obama supporter explains how after you get to a certain age, such as whatever age you turn in 2016, you naturally become concerned with executive overreach. Subscribe to the channel for more helpful explainers!
Recently, many left-leaning people have become (randomly) concerned about reigning in executive power, a mass event not seen since the beginning years of the Bush presidency. This concern manifests itself in suddenly questioning the ability of the president to unilaterally order military action, including drone strikes, air strikes, special forces, etc. It also comes across as questioning whether just maybe executive actions aren’t the best way to govern with impunity, or that lists like the No-Fly List and programs like the NSA’s PRISM could potentially be bad when leaders who aren’t Barack Obama are President.
Just a reminder of Obama’s clear message to Trump: “Executive Action Good for Me, Bad for Thee”…
In the video, the soon to be ex-president somehow tells the reporter with a straight face, “What I worry about in our politics is people getting impatient with the slowness of democracy.”
Then a montage of clips start that show Obama threatening to use executive orders to cram his own agenda down America’s throat, with quotes that include:
“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone…. I can use that pen to sign Executive Orders… and with a phone I can rally folks from around the country.”
“Wherever I can act on my own, without congress… that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“We can’t wait.”
“I’m going to do what I’m going to do through Executive Action.”
“Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Exit thought from an article at The Federalist titled, “Democrats Are Suddenly Terrified By The Prospects Of An ‘Imperial Presidency“:
Of course, the idea that Democrats are worried about the sanctity of our checks and balances rather than the preserving agenda gains is laughable. Remember, Obama didn’t merely push the limits of executive power, like others before him; he normalized and popularized arguments for circumventing the intention of the Constitution. The president — and his allies — regularly maintained that it was his duty to impose progressives’ will on the nation because the legislative branch “didn’t act” in a way he believed it should. This was always couched as a moral imperative. No post-World War II president (and maybe none before) had ever overreached in this way. Courts consistently found his actions unconstitutional, yet he continued to make the argument and act on it.
Let’s also remember that the Left spent the past eight years lamenting checks and balances as “obstructionism” that would sink sound democratic governance. “When they say ‘checks and balances,’ that’s their code word for obstruction or something worse,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently warned when she thought her party would take the White House. Only last week, The New York Times referred to conservative/libertarian arguments to keep the court ideologically balanced a “coup” against the Supreme Court. When Republicans won Congress back in 2010, Washington was always referred to as “dysfunctional.” Legislators were “nihilists” and “willfully negligent.”
