The Taste for Arbitrary Power

"When The New York Times revealed not long ago that President Obama was personally selecting which suspected terrorists should live and which should die, everyone – supporters and critics – treated it as a national security story, period," writes Clark Judge. "I saw it as something else."

To me the White House generated portrait of Mr. Obama personally picking the targets of drone strikes reflects his most disturbing characteristic – a taste for the arbitrary exercise of power.

Beyond the policy, it is one thing for a president to approve or disapprove a military mission developed in line with policy guidance with clearly stated national security objectives.  It is very different for him to say, with no check or balance, “kill this one and this one but not this one.”  No president should seek that kind of power, but Mr. Obama has.

The taste for arbitrary power goes well beyond targeting drone strikes.

More than a few constitutional scholars and commentators (John Yoo and Hugh Hewitt for example) have pointed out that the president acted outside his authority last week in announcing that he would no longer, in the words of Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” in matters of immigration.

How was it different from making recess appointments when the Senate was not in recess?

How was it different from allowing his EPA appointees to regulate CO2 as a pollutant (it is a greenhouse gas, after all), despite Congress’s rejection of such proposals?

How was it different than allowing his attorney general to block states from insuring that their elections are honest and fair by requiring picture IDs at the polls?

How was it different from using government power to strong-arm insurance companies and oil producers not to give to Mr. Romney, as the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel has reported (April 28, Potomac Watch column).

It is a dangerous trait we see here ...