Do You Hear What I Hear?

I caught part of Hillary's address to the Newspaper Association of America today, whose annual meeting was in DC and a perfect opportunity for all the candidates to come by and woo the press. And one thing that I heard fairly clearly was Hillary's support for the unitary executive--granted not the way that President Bush interpreted it--but unitarian nonetheless. Mrs. Clinton focused her talk on "the power and promise of the presidency." And from there, she hit right on things that are important to unitarians. She said: "Our Constitution instructs the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and calls upon the president to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." And then: "The president is the one elected representative of the whole American people...the only constitutional office holder with the power to speak for all of us and with the potential to unify us in the service of our national interest." It is straight from unitary theory that two of the three important constitutional powers of the presidency comes from 1) the "take care" clause, giving the president the power to interpret the meaning of law for subordinates as well as to direct them in the exercise of executive power, and 2) the "oath" clause, which obligates the president to refuse defense or enforcement of laws determined to be unconstitutional. The third, of course, is the "vesting" clause, which gives to the president executive power. And it is important for unitarians to point out that the president is the only political officer accountable to all of the people, which serves as the basis for giving the president responsibility for how laws our carried out.

Among the things she says she will do once elected president, that is different from President Bush:

• "I'll end the use of signing statements to rewrite the laws that Congress has passed..." But note she did not say she would end the practice of signing statements. She says she will end the practice of using signing statements to "rewrite the laws." But President Bush does not use the signing statement to "rewrite" law, this is what his critics charge, thus easy to say you won't behave this way. But it does not say anything about ending the practice of using signing statements.
• "I will end the practice of using executive privilege as a shield against the public's right to know and congress' duty to oversee the president." Just like the signing statement, she qualifies this. She won't end the practice of using executive privilege, just using it to blunt the public and Congress' right to know. But not an end of executive privilege in any and all circumstances, which means that she leaves the door open to use executive privilege, and when she does use it, her critics are going to charge that she is trying to hide something.
• And the cream of the crop: "I will sign executive orders ending the war on science, ordering the closure of Guantanamo, reversing many of the anti-labor provisions" of the Bush administration. But using an executive order to implement policy means that these are things she will not get the Congress to come on board with, and thus bypasses the stubbornness of Congress and implements policy unilaterally. How can that be any other thing but unitarian? She will work with Congress only to a point. Where Congress refuses to playball, she will go her own way.

I fully anticipate that if Mrs. Clinton wins the presidency, she will behave just like her husband, who used the executive branch to accomplish policy objectives once the Congress fell to the Republicans. Unitary executive theory does not say that it applies to a president who uses the executive branch agencies to block the issuance of regulations. It applies to a president who uses the executive branch agencies to secure political and constitutional objectives when faced with a Congress that won't play nice. I can't see how Mrs. Clinton is any different from President Bush, at least in the way they view the role of the president and presidential power in general.

In other news, Mrs. Clinton also continues to say ridiculous things. Apparently still wishing to emphasize how she is a "commoner" and not an "Obama-elitist," she brings up the "nobody knows the trouble I've seen" days of her youth, which is farcical:

As a young girl, I could not go to certain colleges, compete for certain scholarships, participate, if I'd had the sporting ability, in certain sports, or obtain some kind of financial aid for playing them. There were certain jobs that were closed to me and other young women. And the horizons were not quite as broad as those for my brothers. I grew up in a middle-class family, at a time when our nation was investing in the middle class.

Is she serious? What "certain colleges" was she excluded from? She went to Wellesley College as an undergraduate and then Yale for law school. What could she possibly be speaking about? Who wouldn't want that kind of problem? Then she says--and this is a hoot--that she could not get an athletic scholarship, although she didn't participate in sports? What? And then she claims that certain jobs were closed to her "and other young women." My guess is that the "other young women" had a hard time finding employment, not Mrs. Clinton--who graduated Yale Law and worked alongside hubby Bill in the Watergate investigation. If these are her definitions of hard times, who wouldn't want hard times?