All I want is for Sarah Palin to announce her presidential candidacy within weeks of the midterms. Oh please do it Sarah Palin, you would make me ever so happy.
No doubt she'll have enough whatnot to get to Iowa at the least, right? And in the meantime, her participation in every. single. blessed. republican debate will help voters (who could theoretically be less enthused by that point) fall in love with Barack Obama all over again, as they are reminded that the only thing the Republican party has to sell America is a big jar of extra hot crazysauce.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Un-pushing the envelope
Andrew Sullivan:
Of all the things the Bush administration did that gave one that special oh-s**t-maybe-we're-not-coming-back-from-this feeling in the pit of one's stomach, the way their relentless boundary pushing seemed to call the bluff of our whole system of checks and balances was possibly the most disturbing. All those fancy constitutional safeguards appeared for a time to be exactly as effective as the goodwill of the executive willing to humor them. Eventually the Supreme Court did (if in a bit of a roundabout way) call bullshit on the administration, but it took a lot of time and political wind shifting to get there, and a lot of damage was done in between.
After all that, Obama's 'self restraint' in reasserting the executive's humility before the law looks indeed like a great gift to the nation.
If Bush was about the presidency as power, Obama is about the presidency as authority. It's fascinating to watch this deep difference in understanding slowly but unmistakably realize itself in public actions. Somewhere the Founders are smiling. The system is correcting itself after one of the most unbalanced periods in American history. But it took the self-restraint of one man to do it.
Of all the things the Bush administration did that gave one that special oh-s**t-maybe-we're-not-coming-back-from-this feeling in the pit of one's stomach, the way their relentless boundary pushing seemed to call the bluff of our whole system of checks and balances was possibly the most disturbing. All those fancy constitutional safeguards appeared for a time to be exactly as effective as the goodwill of the executive willing to humor them. Eventually the Supreme Court did (if in a bit of a roundabout way) call bullshit on the administration, but it took a lot of time and political wind shifting to get there, and a lot of damage was done in between.
After all that, Obama's 'self restraint' in reasserting the executive's humility before the law looks indeed like a great gift to the nation.
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