#27 Defense of the United States Constitution

"The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."
-- W. E. Gladstone 4 Term Prime Minister of Britain


We Americans tell ourselves many stories about our past and our purpose. Some of these stories are noble and some are shameful. Some are absolutely true, others must be seen in a historical context and still others are pure fiction. The best and most true story of our nation is the Constitution and the mechanisms for amending and interpreting it. At the core of all of the troubling events of the Bush administration is what the historian Gary Wills calls the "executive usurptions" of the Constitution. We need a president who understands and will defend the Constitution so that we can recover from the current administration's serious abuses .

In a commentary for The New York Review of Books, Wills listed the many ways GW Bush has trashed our nation's most important foundational element. He wrote that Bush asserted the executive powers to wage undeclared wars, create military courts, authorize extraordinary renditions, use secret prisons, employ severe coercive interrogation, hold trials with undisclosed evidence, conduct domestic surveillance, and "override congressional oversight in every aspect of government from energy policy to health services."

Wills posits that the Supreme Court will rule on the executive use of these powers. Currently we have four justices who are enthusiastic supporters of the "unitary executive". The next President will probably appoint at least two new justices. It is important that the new justices believe in what Cass Sunstein describes as "a strongly unitary executive branch while also believing that the President cannot make war, or torture people, or engage in foreign surveillance without congressional authorization." It will fall to the Supreme Court to "prevent the "the most thorough reworking and distortion of the Constitution in all our history."

Defense of the Constitution against "sweeping presidential power" is a very important reason to vote for Barack Obama.