Finneran: The Donald Vs. The Constitution

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Friday, May 20, 2016

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Please pass the smelling salts. We need to revive a lot of people who have come down with the vapors over Donald Trump’s political success. 

Such swooning seems to be in great fashion with a certain segment of the electorate. Who remembers the fainting fools who succumbed to Barack Obama’s minimal experience at anything meaningful, other than an ability to read from a teleprompter? Obama himself used to laugh aloud at the delirium in such silly people.

Of course today, after seven plus years of Team Obama, the refrain has changed. Let’s just say that the thrill is gone.........................

As for Donald Trump, there is ample cause for concern. There are so many inconsistencies, so many questions, so many contradictions that no one can really say what a Trump presidency would bring. It’s like peering into a vast dark abyss while hearing slogans and clichés echo off the canyon walls.

The optimist in me suggests that two national reactions might occur in the aftermath of a Trump election to the White House. The first is a long-overdue pushback against a stifling amok political correctness, particularly on college campuses where conservative students and guest speakers are treated as if they are carriers of bubonic plague. “Safe spaces” for adult crybabies will be derided, as they should be. And phrases like “drop dead”, “grow up”, and “get out of my face” will make a welcome comeback. Real tolerance for a diversity of thought might emerge and real respect for the First Amendment might flourish. Perhaps it will actually become an era of live-and-let-live. At least one might hope for such an outcome....................let’s call this possibility a new version of hope and change.

The second reaction, much more important to the nation’s future, should be the long-overdue assertion of Congressional authority. I pray for it and I would welcome it, no matter which candidate gets elected this fall.

That multiple Congresses have become rubber-stamp patsies for our increasingly imperial Ruler-King Presidents is vexing. Certainly you remember the civics lessons of old, the ones that talked about the Constitution’s vital checks and balances against the accumulation of political power in human hands. Such checks and balances, such a dispersal of political power, becomes ever more crucial in our age of  federal government overreach into every aspect of our lives.

Think back over the last sixteen years---eight years under George Bush and eight years under Barack Obama. Did any Republican member of Congress ever stand up to George Bush and confront him on federal spending, federal deficits, the constitutional authority to declare war, Iraq, executive orders, signing statements, or numerous other issues? The answer is “no”, for patsies are patsies, elevating party over nation, and invitations to cocktail parties over leadership.

Of course the same holds true for the Democratic members of Congress regarding President Obama’s multiple errors of judgement, of omission, and of commission. That some of these Democrats waged high-decibel demonstrations of zeal against Bush’s deficits, against Iraq, against drone slaughter, against signing statements and executive orders, only to fall supinely silent when President Obama continued virtually identical policies reveals their utterly shameless hypocrisy. 

A disagreement with a president’s opinion or policy is not treason. In fact disagreement is healthy for all involved. Presidents do not benefit from echo chambers of applause. And Presidents are not rendered infallible by the foibles of elections. But patsies are patsies, apparently never willing to stand up for the institution of which they are a part. Shame on them.

Trump, quite inadvertently and certainly unintentionally, might actually cause a revival of a robust congressional branch which challenges and confronts executive and judicial overreach. The vast unknown of Trump’s policy preferences---beyond “making America great again”---is likely to trigger Congressional, specifically Republican, curiosity. It is of course a given that Congressional Democrats will stand in strong opposition to Trump. But Republican curiosity should trigger probing questions rather than abject passivity. And out of such questions might emerge more thoughtful discussion of alternatives to Trump’s proposals.........that’s the hope anyway.

And it’s the best I can do in this year of political shock waves.  

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

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