Last Night's Speech from the Throne

The pomp and splendor that attends a State of the Union address befits a king more than a chief executive of a constitutional republic.

Then again, what does our Constitution have to do with our increasingly regal presidency, which has incrementally appropriated monarchial powers for well over a century?

Since Wilson, every president has (with occasional exceptions, e.g. Carter in 1981) declined to simply send a letter to Congress conveying the state of the union. They've all opted for an ostentatious entry into the House chamber, transforming an administrative duty into a royal pageantry.

The President-King ascends to the dais and admonishes his subjects. The nation curtsies. Every network preempts regular programming - unthinkable that his majesty might appear on just one channel.

Washington kept his address to about ten minutes. Jefferson declined to appear, on grounds that doing so was akin to the English monarch's "Speech from the Throne."

Modern presidents, who mostly wouldn't make pimples on the aforementioneds' arses, tend to speak for an hour or so, demagogueing for the Welfare State, the Warfare State, or both (FDR, LBJ, both Bushes). No attempt is made to justify the various expansions of government on constitutional grounds. Always, there is a crisis in need of government action.

The very staging of such an event precludes humility, or even a modicum of the restraint that our Constitution was designed to impose on government.

The Imperial Presidency is not new. Culpability for this lamentable fact runs across the spectrum.

Blame the Supreme Court for abandoning Original Intent in favor of some contrived, organic constitution which inhales and exhales with every statist scheme emanating from academic pinheads. Instead of amendments, this constitution has shadows and penumbras, which one has to have special dispensation to read.

Blame the Congress, for abdicating it's duties and responsibilities. Members inveigh against unpopular wars, but fail to exercise their obligation and power to defund them. They recoil in mock horror at abuse of power from the executive branch, while creating evermore executive departments. They place sole blame on the president for budget deficits, when spending bills originate exclusively in the House.

Blame We the People. We don't vet candidates. We don't read the Constitution. We stay loyal to one of the parties, when both have proven to be the chief threats to our liberties.

While presidential hubris is well entrenched, Barack Obama carried it to a new level last night.

For seventy minutes he waxed petulant and imperious, lashing out at the Senate, the Supreme Court, oil companies, affluent people, Constitutionalists, and opponents of global warming dogma. Here was his broadside against the latter:

I know there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.

Our radical young president acknowledged and dismissed his opponents all in one breath. You can't do that and make a credible claim to being open to the ideas of others.
Oh, but you can dissemble - claiming to eagerly desire dialogue, while what you mean is: "we are going to discuss the matter, and then we are going to do it my way."
Truth is relative, according to the original Chicago organizer, Saul Alinsky. Insolence, he taught, is the proper attitude for a change agent. Obama, as a Chicago organizer, taught Alinsky's methods. Now he is using them against the Constitution, and anyone who in any way opposes him.
Even after pushing federal deficits to unprecedented levels, Obama continued to blame our debt problem on Bush. Then he told the most blatant of several lies - that he is going to bring down the deficit beginning in 2011. Obama knows that those who can count and connect dots will make the following observation:

Taking spending to record levels over the next year, then freezing a portion of said spending, WILL NOT REDUCE THE DEFICIT!

"The politics of change," Alinsky's concept as applied by Obama, calls for masses of people to be mobilized in the cause of deliberately vague ideology. The hope is that the masses will be naive enough, or too busy, to notice that the Emperor has no clothes.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.!

In other words, the Wizard doesn't want you to notice the specifics of what he says about the deficit. Just trust him to be your brain, your heart, and your courage.

And get that damn Toto out of here before he gets on talk radio or Fox news and exposes the whole charade!