Obama: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome Congress?”
**Posted by Phineas
Politico’s Glenn Thrush today reports, in an article on Obama’s second-term strategy, that, soon after reelection, the top-most question on his mind apparently how to figure a way toΒ govern without Congress:
After the emotional high of his reelection dissipated, Obama convened his top advisers for a series of sober meetings in the West Wing to map out strategies for dealing with the fiscal cliff negotiations. Aides remember Obamaβs mood changing, like a man returning from a vacation to find a ransacked house.
βGuys, I donβt want politics to be a limit of what you recommend to me,β Obama told senior aides David Plouffe, Lew, Dan Pfeiffer and Pete Rouse a couple of weeks after his reelection, according to a White House aide with direct knowledge of the meeting.
βLetβs come up with an agenda, then letβs figure it out from there as best we can,β he said, prodding them to adopt a more muscular approach to the use of executive power.Β βWe canβt let the driving force of what we pass be Congress.β
Wait minute. I have to check the owner’s manual on this thing…. Ah!Β Here it is:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
That’s Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution, Mr. President. Try as I might –and I’ve really looked hard!– I don’t see anything in there about you getting to pass anything. In fact, now that I think about it, I think theseΒ old, hard-to-understandΒ and so veryΒ flawed wordsΒ mean that CongressΒ isΒ the driving force of what gets passed.
I dunno, Boss. I know you’re a constitutional scholar and all, but maybe you should try reading the document, sometime.
viaΒ Charlie Spiering
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)