Joshua Micah Marshall Quotes
When Hillary's getting knocked around by the folks on the Hill is Bill going to go Larry King to knock her enemies around? Will he be going off to foreign countries on his own little diplomatic missions? I had assumed he'd remain a step in the background as he has through through most of this decade. But that doesn't seem to be the case. If the constitution allowed it, I'd happily have Clinton back. I'd happily have Hillary in his place. But I don't want them both.
Marshall, Joshua Micah. Talking Points Memo, TPM Media, 2007.
There have been many examples of Presidents in time of war who have asked Congress & received additional powers whose constitutionality was sometimes tested. The Alien & Sedition acts of the John Adams administration, Lincoln in the Civil War controlling the Southern governments, Wilson jailing people verbally opposing the draft, FDR incarcerating Japanese Americans in WWII. However, in those cases, the President asked for and got the powers from Congress. Nichols claimed that by Bush, just assuming powers, he was acting like a king & not a president, and that per se was an impeachable offence. As unpopular as Bush was, his Vice President was much moreso, & Bush was in his last term; neither party wanted to go through another impeachment after the Republican attempt to oust William Clinton ended in acquittal. Other constitutional scholars do not believe the “acting like a king” rises to the level of an impeachable offense; only specific “high crimes & misdemeanors” would qualify.
This concept of Presidential powers greatly expanded the traditional power of the Presidency. To one degree or another this became the view of every president who followed until George W. Bush who went one large step further. He maintained that the President could do that which was specifically prohibited by law if the purpose was to perform a Constitutional duty.
This was the President’s original role regarding legislation. However, in the 20th century, Presidents have become more active and suggest laws and often initiate the process and then end it by signing the law that he suggested and shepherded through the Congress. But this was never the vision of the Founding Fathers, but since it is not addressed in the Constitution is not an unconstitutional process.
Joshua Micah Jesajan-Dorja Marshall is an American journalist and blogger who founded Talking Points Memo, which in 2004 The New York Times Magazine called "one of the most popular and most respected sites" in the blogosphere. A liberal, he currently presides over a network of progressive-oriented sites that operate under the TPM Media banner and average 400,000-page views every weekday and 750,000 unique visitors every month.
