Obama: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome Congress?”

**Posted by Phineas

"My will is enough!"
“My will is enough!”

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 Obama’s mood changing, like a man returning from a vacation to find a ransacked house.

β€œGuys, I don’t want politics to be a limit of what you recommend to me,” 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.

β€œLet’s come up with an agenda, then let’s figure it out from there as best we can,” he said, prodding them to adopt a more muscular approach to the use of executive power.Β β€œWe can’t let the driving force of what we pass be Congress.”

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)

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