Jonathan Turley on Obama's Power Grab

Every now and again, a "gentleman of the Left" gets it right. 

Here's Jonathan Turley in today's Los Angeles Times Opinion pages, commenting on Barack Obama's imperialist presidency (my words, not his, but the implication is clear). Pointing out that the American system of balanced powers, as established by James Madison and the founders, was designed to protect individuals, i.e., "we, the people" (yes, that includes you and me and Bobby McGee), from "any one branch," he takes Obama to task for his "recent unilateral moves" that have "accelerated at an alarming rate under Obama." 

I like how Turley put it:

James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.

You'd almost think this critique came from the Racist Right. It did not. Turley admits he "happens to agree" with most of Obama's policies. My understanding is that he leans leftward, though apparently he's taken positions over the years that have angered the far left.

Unfortunately, this kind of scrutiny may be "too little, too late" from a left-leaning media that has turned a blind eye to this president's flaws. One can only hope that the tsunami of Obama Adulation that has flooded the dominant media's newsrooms is beginning to recede, leaving in its wake a few good men and women who are willing to sift through the mess and begin the long, hard, sloggy job of cleaning up after Obama once he leaves office. 

Our system is changing in a fundamental way without even a whimper of regret. No one branch in the Madisonian system can go it alone — not Congress, not the courts, and not the president. The branches are stuck with each other in a system of shared powers, for better or worse. They may deadlock or even despise one another. The founders clearly foresaw such periods. They lived in such a period.

Whatever problems we face today in politics, they are of our own making. They should not be used to take from future generations a system that has safeguarded our freedoms for more than 200 years.

 "The President's Power Grab," by Jonathan Turley (Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014).