I have done all sorts of jobs in my long life; from working
on the shop floor to working in the executive suite of someone else's
enterprise as well as my own. I also held every position you can think of
between these two extremes. And now that I am retired, I spend my time
pontificating on the events of the day, and what other pundits say about these
events. This is why people like the editors of the Wall Street Journal and
George Will bring a smile to my face when I read what they sometimes write.
Take, for example what happened on December 21, 2013. The
Wall Street Journal published an editorial under the title: “Obama Repeals
ObamaCare” and the subtitle: “Under pressure from Senate Democrats, the
President partly suspends the individual mandate.” Also, the New York Post
published a piece by George Will under the title: When the President rewrites
the laws” which he began by quoting a passage delivered by the Supreme Court in
1838; something that clearly does not apply to the current situation.
This aside, George Will now wears the Republican hat and
yells at the President: “I told you, I told you.” This is how he put it:
“Republicans' dismay about Obama's offenses became acute when [he was]
compelled to agree with them that the Affordable Care Act could not be
implemented as written.” To make sure that the reader understands this is an
idiosyncratic fault specific to this President, he brings up the subject of
welfare reform and prosecution of drug crimes that the republicans say have
been effectively altered by President Obama.
George Will now gets into the heart of his thesis which he
says is not his own but that of a law professor who wrote about it in a piece
that will soon be published. Will says the professor demonstrates that the
Constitution does not justify Obama's reading of the “Take Care Clause” which
says the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” So
you want to know: Why is that? And all you get is that a president is not a
king.
And this is where a huge gulf appears on the intellectual
landscape; one that separates the mentality of the executives who have to make
decisions at every moment of their waking hours, and the academic pundits who
weigh abstract notions that may not always correspond to reality. Oh how I wish
I had it as easy as I have it now when I was on the shop floor deciding if
stamping this piece of work as having passed inspection would endanger the lives
of the passengers who will someday fly on this plane. And how I wish I could
delete a directive I issued yesterday from my executive office, as easily as I
can delete a sentence I now write that does not sound as good as I thought it
will.
And I tell you, George Will has it easy because after
discussing the abstractions of the professor, he comes to his punch line which
is this: “Price asks: 'If Obama may postpone enforcement of the ACA's insurance
requirements and employer mandate, could a subsequent president ignore the ACA
altogether?'” Well, my answer is no because an executive does not make
decisions on a whim. His guiding principles are to be efficient and to do no
harm. When he or she is required to execute something, they think of the best
way and the best moment to do it. This is what Obama is doing now; it is not
what a future president will be doing by ignoring the ACA altogether.
We now come to the Wall Street Journal editorial. Anyone
that is familiar with the publication's editorial will tell you this is an
unusually long and rambling piece. Still, the editors make a few points, the
strongest being the one that appears in the subtitle. They say that the
President responded to pressure from Democrats. The truth is that constituents
wrote to their representatives telling them of the difficulties they were meeting
because of the new law. What happened next is what should happen and does
happen in every healthy democracy. The representatives wrote to the person in
charge of the proper department – in this case Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
What the Secretary did upon receipt of the complaints was to
look into the law, and the way that the regulations for implementing it were
written. She saw deficiencies – this being a new and complex law – and she
recommended that the approach be altered to minimize the chance of some people
falling through cracks not of their making. You do not need a king to do this;
you only need a Secretary with a good head and a good heart.