Supremely silly

In the past week, political rhetoric in the United States has gone from “mildly annoying” to “troublesome” to “straight idiotic.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back was President Barack Obama’s statement that, were the Supreme Court to overturn his health care initiative, it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” because the bill was an economic issue and the court generally defers to Congress when it comes to making policy.

That’s when the world went a little bit crazy, for some reason. These words are apparently some sort of secret code that causes a chemical imbalance in the brains of basically everyone but me, I think.

Dean Singleton, the chairman of the Associated Press, asked Obama to explain himself: “Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be unprecedented for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the Court has done during its entire existence.” 

Mr. Singleton is absolutely right. But if that’s what the court has done during its entire existence, do you really suppose that Obama’s use of the word “unprecedented” should be taken strictly literally here? Or can we use the common elements of language, like context, to figure out what he meant?

USA Today’s Elite Fact-Checking Squadron noted that Obama clarified his earlier statement by saying that “the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference” to Congress. Their analysis: “Perhaps so, but ‘significant restraint’ is a far cry from ‘unprecedented.’”

Gotcha, Mr. President! How do you like those miniscule semantic apples?
But like I said, literally the entire U.S. seems to be under the impression that Obama is totally unaware of the concept of judicial review.

I guess he skipped eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grades, as well as his undergraduate history classes, his law classes and the constitutional law classes he taught.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto tweeted, “Barack Obama is stunningly ignorant when it comes to constitutional law.”  

The reason I’m writing this column is because I am honestly and completely confused. I’m not saying I’m confused as a rhetorical argument to try to make these arguments look silly. I’m just actually confused.

Do these people really think that Obama thinks the courts have never overturned a law?

It actually appears so. George Parry of the Philadelphia Enquirer writes, “How could a president of the United States of America, of all people, not know something so basic about our system of government? Where has he been all these years? Kenya?”

Wow.

So this is my letter to George and all those like him, including Judge Jerry Smith, who assigned the Justice Department homework — a three-page, single-spaced paper requiring they affirm the administration’s belief in judicial review. It’s fortunate I’m not in the Justice Department, because that paper wouldn’t require three pages: Use your freaking brains.

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu