{"id":6754,"date":"2013-11-14T11:24:39","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6754"},"modified":"2013-11-14T11:24:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:24:39","slug":"the-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-rule-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rule of Law?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When his pet businesses did not like elements of the Affordable Care Act, Obama simply exempted them. When employers objected that their mandate would unduly hamper job creation, the president simply ignored the settled law and exempted them. Now, when millions have lost their coverage, the president is said to be ready to again reinterpret settled law and no longer demand that private insurance plans conform to the ACA statute, at least for a year.<\/p>\n

Aside from the question of whether it is legal or right for the president to decide arbitrarily which elements of legislation to faithfully execute, it is also a sort of new way of ad hoc governing: The president grandly introduces a new piece of unworkable legislation, does not know or care much about the consequences of implementing it, demagogues the bill, demonizes the opposition, gets it passed, uses the passage for political purposes, and then waits to see what happens in the real world.<\/p>\n

When more than 50 percent of the country is outraged, he scraps what he finds politically useful to scrap (\u201cenforcement discretion\u201d). Apparently, Obama believes that after such trial and error he will work the bugs out of the ACA and end up with what he can call a success \u2014 too bad for those who lose coverage or pay more in the meantime and for the legalists who worry that what he is doing is against the law.<\/p>\n

All this is right out of the radical Athenian assembly, which\u00a0on any given day could do whatever its majority wished and then the next undo whatever it wished.\u00a0But such governance is not what the framers had in mind when they established the checks and balances of a republican tripartite government and entrusted the president with faithfully executing all the laws passed by congress and signed by him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner\u00a0 When his pet businesses did not like elements of the Affordable Care Act, Obama simply exempted them. When employers objected that their mandate would unduly hamper job creation, the president simply ignored the settled law and exempted them. Now, when millions have lost their coverage, the president is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[278],"tags":[176,12,40],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1KW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8650,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-descent-into-lawlessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":0},"title":"America\u2019s Descent into Lawlessness","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Do you remember Lewis \u201cScooter\u201d Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Yet Plame may not have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via Townhall.com","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/b383dc00-e7c4-40a1-9cb6-9eab9fab12a6-500x256.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6614,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-as-chaos\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":1},"title":"Obama as Chaos","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama\u2019s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute. By that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3463,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/after-obama-the-deluge\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":2},"title":"After Obama, the Deluge","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission \u2014 and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in US history. The ensuing $3 trillion dollars in red\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6672,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-redefines-the-shutdown\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":3},"title":"Obamacare Redefines the Shutdown","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 Democratic senators up for reelection in 13 months are now embracing, in their calls to delay Obamacare, the same themes as did the House Republicans and a few senators a few weeks ago\u2014hoping to preempt mounting criticism. In this surreal landscape, three weeks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/for-obama-inconvenient-law-is-irrelevant-law\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":4},"title":"For Obama, Inconvenient Law Is Irrelevant Law","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The president dismantles immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online There is a humane, transparent, truthful \u2014 and constitutional \u2014 way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(John Gress\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pic_giant_112714_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6690,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-obama-still-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":6754,"position":5},"title":"Is Obama Still President?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"His cadences soar on, through scandal after fiasco after disaster. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 We are currently learning whether the United States really needs a president. Barack Obama has become a mere figurehead, who gives speeches few listen to any more, issues threats that scare fewer, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/44210696_12d559204e-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6755,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions\/6755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}