According to a new Washington Post-ABC
News poll, two-thirds of Americans are worried about an Ebola epidemic in
the United States, and more than 4 in 10 are “very” or “somewhat worried” that
they or a close family member might catch the virus. The media frenzy and conspiracy theories on
the internet have run riot. Ebola is foreign and exotic and commands our full
attention with isolation wards and full body suits.
Senator Pat Roberts, in the fight of
his life for reelection in Kansas, has latched onto this fear of Ebola to
attack President Obama and bolster his campaign. Part of his press release reads:
“The President has failed to secure our
borders, and he is now failing to lead during this crisis. From the crisis in the Middle East with ISIS,
to the standoff in Ukraine with Russia, and now to the spread of Ebola from
West Africa to our own shores, this Administration has consistently been two
steps behind and asleep at the wheel. We cannot afford the risk of President
Obama’s inaction and failure to lead. American’s are frightened, and they
deserve better.”
It is the Senator’s reference to
“failure to lead” that grabbed my attention. His party along with a coalition
of conservatives and libertarians have filed suit against the President for
taking action on a number of issues with which they do not agree. The lawsuit involves a series of executive
orders that Obama issued on climate change, immigration rules, the health-care
law and raising the minimum wage for federal contractors. He has also unilaterally filled important
governmental positions that were left unaddressed by Congress for many months
if not years.
Republicans claim that these
Presidential actions were power grabs that did not have the requisite backing
from Congress. Tea party members have
actually called for impeaching the President for issuing the executive orders. These are the very same republicans who
control the 113th House of Representatives, a legislative body all but assured
of being the least productive in recorded history in terms of passing
legislation signed into law.
So when is the President leading too
much and when is he failing to lead? Is
it simply a matter of partisan politics or is there something more basic in our
unique system of government? Any student
of constitutional history knows that while Alexander Hamilton sought a strong
executive for the “protection of the community” and the “steady administration
of laws”, James Madison sought a system of checks and balances that greatly
limited the executive. Madison won this
debate and our constitutional republic is based on the limitation of authority
and the division of power.
Unfortunately, this division of power is not
clearly defined or divided and often replicated among the three branches of
government and among federal, state and local authorities. The result is that any new crisis that has
not been put to the test, like infectious disease, or is politically charged,
like immigration or is constitutionally unclear, like the war powers, becomes
muddled and messy until a consensus can be built.
The President is neither a benevolent
dictator nor a pawn of the Congress and Judiciary. He is an executive constantly seeking a path
to power through the maze that is our constitutional system. This is why he can be criticized for acting
and not acting in the same conversation.
When it comes to the exercise of power, the leader of the free world is
anything but free. When it comes to
Ebola, my guess is that the country will learn a great deal from the present
scare, similar to the consensus that was built after 9/11, and be much better prepared in the future for
“the big one”, most likely an influenza pandemic.
