CSotD: Inconceivable Choices
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Luckovich uses that word, and I do think it means what he thinks it means.
But there are two reasons to quibble with Luckovich’s cartoon, the first being that the Founders had, at best, a relatively select bloc of voters in mind.
Voters weren’t specifically “elite” and it’s flat out wrong to suggest that they were universally white and male, because there’s nothing in the Constitution about race, sex or educational attainment of voters.
In fact, Jefferson (who did not have a direct hand in writing the Constitution) is on record as approving any literate person voting, though he was talking about reading newspapers in general, not necessarily being able to plow through the Federalist/Antifederalist essays that appeared in them.
Given that they had scoundrels like Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson amongst them, the Founders realized that voters could make really bad decisions. I’m not sure how they could have framed a “no scoundrels” clause, but the possibility was there and they chose not to pursue it.
However, we now have the 25th Amendment, which isn’t really about scoundrels. That’s what impeachment is for, and the Founders included that. The 25th is about capability and, while intended to be about strokes and heart attacks and unsuccessful assassinations, it could be stretched to include madness.
The “What if?” question is, had the 25th been in existence in the final months of Wilson’s administration, would anyone have invoked it? And MAGA extremists might well ask why it wasn’t invoked in the final months or so of Biden’s administration, assuming he was as befuddled as he appeared at the debate?
The answer is that it requires the VP and majority of the Cabinet or a Congressional committee to call the shot, which pretty well guarantees that it would be reserved for strokes and heart attacks and brain damage from unsuccessful assassination attempts. I doubt Wilson’s staff would have invoked it because they did a dandy job of covering for him.
Furthermore, if the Founders had put a “no scoundrels” or “no madmen” clause into the Constitution, either it would come into play all the time or never, depending on how it was framed.
There’s no point in pinning your hopes on a 25th Amendment gambit, and we’ve seen what happens when we attempt to impeach the President for dishonest dealings. That won’t happen, either.
The days of Howard Baker and his contemporaries are long past.
Not that things were entirely rock solid back in those days, either, but at least when Judge Sirica ordered something, the executive branch complied, which brings us to this
Juxtaposition of the Day
We studied the Constitution in eighth grade, which for our parents’ generation had been the end of schooling for a lot of young people. Hence Eighth Grade Graduation ceremonies, and several of my classmates were the first in their families to go the full 12 grades.
Today, 87% of Americans graduate from high school, and Chip Bok went to the University of Dayton. There’s no excuse for him not to know how district courts operate.
Allie’s POV is more defensible in that he recognizes the levels of appeal that can be pursued, as Chief Justice Roberts recently observed.
But that doesn’t mean that you can ignore the rulings of a district court. District Judges, indeed, have authority that a decent, patriotic citizen respects, as least until an appeal has been pursued.
The question is whether we’re dealing with a decent, patriotic citizen or a scoundrel, and Anderson is only one of several people to point out the list of authoritarian actions being carried out by our president.
It’s reasonable to point out that, if you can tell a terrorist by passionate speeches made on a college campus, it’s even easier to tell a scoundrel if instead of just making authoritarian speeches he also pursues authoritarian policies.
But while it’s nearly impossible to persuade a majority in the Senate to take executive actions seriously, it’s easy to condemn, jail and deport students for their speech, without the burden of a trial.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
It’s interesting, in a curious, intellectual way, to wonder if scoundrels understand that they are scoundrels, and whether they make a conscious choice to be insensitive and harmful to other people, or if it just happens.
Herblock suggested that the elite live in a bubble from which they cannot see other people. Goldwater’s family did, indeed, own a department store, but Reagan’s path was different. He grew up in a family of modest means but found rapid success in broadcasting and acting, so he may have seen poverty as a choice, having seen it closer.
Howard Lutnik was the son of a college professor and an artist. He could have known poverty, since his parents died while he was in college, but the school waived his fees thereafter, and he was hired at a prestigious law firm upon graduation.
Lutnick just bought a house in Washington for $25 million from Fox News figure Bret Baier. He paid cash.
My judgment is skewed by the fact that, if my Social Security check didn’t arrive, it would be my landlords who would notice, and they might well complain, given that my rent and their own Social Security are key parts of their budget.
I promise you, I would not just shrug and say, “Well, maybe next month.” But then I’ve never inherited a department store or played lead in a famous movie, and, when I graduated, rather than choosing to be offered a spot in a prestigious law firm, I chose instead to be offered a job making pizzas at minimum wage.
As Margulies says, we may all get a chance to make some choices, and it’s nice of the president to deport those brown people who take jobs away from your grandparents.
Which might sound humorous, except that I remember living in South Bend shortly after Studebaker went belly up and abandoned their pensioners. There was an entire phalanx of widows in their 70s and 80s flipping burgers and cleaning motel rooms and old men working as groundskeepers.
It’s not inconceivable that you could get to make similar choices yourself.
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