Is the Constitution misused for partisan purposes?

It looks like the Constitution is going to be bent again, adding to a growing trend to use its broad principles to achieve narrow results.

This time, the Republicans in the House of Representatives have decided to sue President Obama for allegedly having exceeded his authorized powers as chief executive.

They claim that he is applying laws passed by Congress in violation of their own provisions.  They want a federal court to decide they are right and order him to pull back.

The Constitution requires a separation of powers among the executive branch headed by the president, the Congress and the courts.  The lawsuit would ask a court to settle a dispute over the powers of the other two branches.  Courts usually stay away from such disputes, and that’s likely to happen now.

Besides, who pays for the lawsuit?  Isn’t all money spent by the federal government supposed to be covered by a bill passed by Congress and signed by the president?

So why is the House, after a narrow majority vote, suing the president?

The short answer is it’s just politics, an attempt to embarrass Obama and weaken the Democrats in an election year.

The long answer is the GOP has frustrated Obama, who has used executive power to do what he thought necessary, when Congress refused to deal with major issues.  In this action, he followed American political tradition.

While the Constitution was meant to ensure the president would not gain excessive power, presidents since Washington have pushed at the limits of their authority.  Because no law can cover every situation, presidents have assumed they could impose their own interpretations or fill in the gaps and issued executive orders.

Presidents have also asserted their power by using so-called signing statements.  The president signs a bill but, at the same time, but says he will not enforce those parts of it he considers unconstitutional.

In fact, Obama has issued fewer executive orders and signing statements than his predecessors.

While the president uses his executive power to take actions that might look legislative, Congress sticks its nose under the presidential tent.  It passes bills trying to direct foreign policy and limiting clear presidential powers.  And it can deny funding to activities it does not like.

The reason why this situation is allowed to continue is the recognition the roles could easily be reversed.  So a party does not complain too loudly if it believes it might similarly want to poach across the separation of powers sometime later.

The conflict between the exercise of executive and legislative power is almost inevitable because of the American system of government.  The elections of the president and Congress are completely separate, creating the opportunity for political warfare.

Under the parliamentary system, the head of the government is a member of the legislative body.  For example, the prime minister of Canada is a member of parliament.  He heads the government, because his party controls the parliament.

If a government under a parliamentary system loses a so-called “vote of confidence,” the prime minister must step down.

In the American system, even when Congress is controlled by the opposition party, it cannot force the president out of office on political grounds.  He or she can only be removed by electoral defeat or conviction after impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

It is generally agreed that the two presidents who were impeached but not convicted – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – faced the equivalent of a vote of confidence.  In short, they overcame an attempt to graft parliamentary rule onto the American system.

The House GOP understands that it could not remove Obama and it might be discredited if it devoted several months to drawing up and voting on articles of impeachment.  A lawsuit might accomplish the same result as impeachment by embarrassing Obama.

Some Democrats, believing talk of impeachment would backfire on the GOP, have charged the Republicans really plan to bring the president to trial.

Add to these latest actions the abusive use of the filibuster, holding phony Senate sessions to block presidential appointments, and the failure to reconcile differing Senate and House bills, and the Constitution is increasingly used to block virtually any bills, no matter how badly needed.

If Congress is controlled by the Republicans over the next two years with a Democrat in the White House, the country faces a period of either total stalemate or forced compromise.

What’s a voter, caught in the middle, to do?  We need to ask each candidate which course he or she will favor if elected.

Has America lost its world leadership?

At the end of the film “Miss Congeniality,” the FBI agent who has masqueraded as a Miss America contestant, admits she agrees with the rote refrain of the others, saying, “I really do want world peace.”

Everybody says they “really do want world peace,” while knowing it won’t happen.

For a long time, the best available substitute for world peace was the Cold War.  The atomic bomb had imposed the possibility of “mutually assured destruction,” and that was reality, not a pious hope.

So long as the United States and the Soviet Union could destroy one another, they would back off from confrontations that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.  Perhaps that did not create a golden era with the sun shining all over the world, but it worked.

Not only did the two super powers stop short of directly going to war, they also restrained other countries from actions that might drag the two major players and the world into a war too horrible to imagine.  The threat of nuclear war served as the guarantor of world peace.

While some countries were relegated to the sidelines, many others found themselves in the orbit of one super power or the other.  Armed and financed by their patron, they had little ability to act independently.

Then, the Cold War ended.  It looked like the United States was the only remaining super power as it witnessed the breakup of countries, including the Soviet Union.  Smaller countries would pose no threat to the United States and presumably, they would be unable to unleash nuclear warfare.

The American peace would be an extension of the ability of the United States, during World War II and even during the Cold War, to use its undeniable military and economic power to impose its will on much of the world. 

Why do Americans now feel a sense of weakness and inability to control events?  American power in the world seems to have dissolved.

In a highly partisan political climate, it is easy to blame President Obama.  His personal style, soft-spoken and sometimes hesitant, seems to favor limits on American action and invite others to disturb the peace.

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who lost to Obama in 2008, almost never misses the chance to propose militant reactions to world events and to criticize the president for not taking his advice.

Even if you might want more assertiveness from Obama and less from McCain, that may miss the point.

It’s possible there are no more super powers, a fact that may be difficult for Americans to accept.  Since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Americans had grown use to calling the shots, but now frustration has replaced self-confidence.

Look at the Ukraine, Syria, and Israel-Hamas.  War rages in all three areas, and the United States seems unable to do anything about these conflicts except to propose cease-fires, which turns out to be a bit like saying, “I really do want world peace.”

The Ukraine is torn between Russia, its historic boss, and Western Europe, which offers an opportunity for prosperity.  Because the economies of Russia and Western Europe are intertwined, Western Europe took quite a while to agree with the U.S. that Russia should suffer from real sanctions.  Finally, the downing of the Malaysian plane got it to act.

In Syria, torn by war, the Russians like the current regime and the Americans don’t.  Without a real alternative, the U.S. cannot force a resolution. 

And the conflict in Syria has deprived Hamas, which controls Gaza, of the backing essential to maintain its conflict with Israel.  It is now engaged in a last-ditch, almost suicidal, effort, and Israel responded by going to war in hopes of finishing off Hamas.  The U.S. cannot even achieve a ceasefire. 

None of this is particularly healthy, and it is a poor substitute for peace.

So long as nobody is shooting at Americans, which could become a possibility in the next couple of years after the troops leave Afghanistan, why should all this matter to us? 

The political partisan divide reflects an underlying sense of unhappiness in the country.  And that results partly from a recognition that the U.S. role in the world, as the dominant power, has eroded and perhaps been lost. 

Recognizing the world has changed, leaders on both sides of the aisle could seek a new definition of America’s role.  The goal would be to develop a consistent policy, attuned to the 21^st Century and aimed at restoring American self-confidence in world affairs.

Shunning Statoil, Maine harms state, nation

Recent news about a $2.5 billion investment in England by Statoil, the giant Norwegian energy company, has reminded people that Maine kicked the company out of the state.

But the real meaning of the state’s action has been greatly underrated.  The move was an epic error.

Statoil is rated by Forbes magazine as the 51^st largest corporation in the world.  Fortune magazine places it at 54^th.  Either way, it’s a major world heavyweight, one that was mistreated by Maine, harming both the state and the nation.

Statoil wanted to develop a $120 million pilot wind off the coast of Maine, considered a prime site.  You might remember former Gov. Angus King saying the Maine was “the Saudi Arabia of wind.”

The Legislature set up a review process for offshore wind power, and Statoil’s project went through the regulatory proceeding successfully.

Gov. LePage was reputed to be cool to wind power, but warm to giving the University of Maine a second shot at displacing Statoil.  To get the governor to sign an energy bill, the Legislature gave him what he wanted and reopened the process.  Records later revealed the governor’s clear intent to kill Statoil in Maine.

When the news of Statoil’s big investment in England became known, the governor’s energy aide insulted everybody’s intelligence by saying that what the Norwegian company was doing there would not have worked in Maine.  But that’s not what it proposed for Maine.

There’s been criticism about Maine’s lost energy opportunity.  The University-related project failed to get the federal financial support essential to its development.  The net result for Maine in terms of offshore wind power is next to nothing.

But the meaning is far worse than simply lost investment in wind power.

When Maine killed its approval, Statoil departed, saying “a lot of uncertainty” about Maine government discouraged it from operating in the state.

Maine needs outside investment, because small, local business alone, while important, is not saving the state economy.  The ousting of Statoil sends a clear message to other major corporations to invest elsewhere.  The Maine slogan “Open for Business” is obviously untrue.

Foreign investors are building manufacturing plants all over the United States.  Maine, with an aging population and limited opportunities for young people, should be chasing outside investment, not 

getting the reputation of shunning it.

So the first problem is that the Statoil situation not only affected wind power, but also radically increased the likelihood that major foreign investors will go elsewhere.  That’s seriously bad news for the state.

But also for the United States.  The international flow of funds continues to show more money going out of the country than coming in.  The word in the energy world is that the federal Department of Energy would have supported the Statoil project, though it would not back the one involving the University of Maine.

The U.S. government could have made its preferences known sooner, instead of letting Maine kill Statoil.  And maybe, instead of working to undermine the Statoil investment, the governor’s energy office could have tried to get its own sense of which way the wind was blowing.

Another problem is the growing American attitude toward higher education.  Many believe universities should train people for jobs and boost economic development at the expense of sound, comprehensive education and in-depth research.

It looked like good politics to favor the University of Maine over some foreign company.  Boosterism gets votes.  It takes political courage to focus on the long-range role of academic institutions, which has an indirect and differed effect.

The strength and standing of the University of Maine depends on its recognition as a research university.  Maine needs to try continually to improve its quality of research if it is to retain top teachers and students and to draw favorable attention to the state.

The drive to be an offshore wind developer smacked of academic hucksterism.  To work on developing the theory and practice of the wind energy resource makes sense, but lobbying hard to be the developer detracts from the critical, academic function of the University.

To be sure, the wind project has brought some funding to the University but with little apparent benefit to the institution as a whole, which is undergoing painful cutbacks.

Despite his inexplicable hostility to Statoil, Gov. LePage has been consistently right about one thing.  He does not like electricity customers, already paying high rates, subsidizing energy development.

If state government wants to subsidize offshore wind energy, it should use tax dollars not electric rates.  Of course, right now, that’s no longer a problem.

Divided government is “do nothing” government

With the deep partisan split, it is appealing to think that divided government is both a check on political excess and a driver for compromise.

With no middle-of-the road influence in government, divided government should protect against extremes while forcing deals.  At least in theory.

A closer look suggests divided government doesn’t work as well as we may think.

Harry Truman, a Democratic president, faced an unyielding Republican Congress that blocked his legislation.  He used their opposition successfully in his own campaign for reelection, charging he faced a “do nothing” Congress.  He won and also got a Congress of his own party.

Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Bill Clinton both confronted opposition control of Congress.  Though they could sometimes make divided government work, Reagan ran into strong opposition for his illegal Iran-Contra fund shuffle, and Clinton was impeached.

Divided government works when the two sides try to meet public needs on which they both agree.  It fails when the prospect of partisan gain from blocking the other side outweighs the responsibility of carrying out the public trust.

Politicians who say they can work with the opposition almost always end up these days following their party’s line.

Even those few considered moderates, like Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, end up falling in line with the dominant views of their parties when it comes to key votes.

These days, President Obama is unable to get the GOP-dominated House of Representatives to pass any bills that might make the Democrats look good.  So we don’t get compromise.  We get a mostly “do nothing” Congress.

The GOP won’t pass a bill on badly needed immigration reform, thought the parties largely agree, to avoid giving the Democrats the chance to take credit for the legislation. 

Much the same is true at the state level.  A Republican governor bitterly attacks a Democratic Legislature that sees itself as a check on him and not as his partner in implementing a conservative agenda.  And he sets records with his vetoes.

In short, divided government is as likely to produce no results as to come up with moderate compromises. 

By contrast, periods of one party rule have generally brought results.  Under a president and Congress dominated by the Democrats in the 1930s and 40s, a great deal of legislation was passed.  The point is not whether it was good or bad, but that it happened.  Much the same is true of the Kennedy-Johnson era in the 1960s.

More recently, Republican President George W. Bush dealt with a GOP Congress for four years and was able to gain support for his foreign and domestic initiatives.

In Maine, Democratic control of the executive and legislative branches produced results.  GOP Gov. Paul LePage got an income tax cut thanks to a Republican legislature.

Of course, if you were on the minority side during these periods of one-party rule, you might have preferred a “do nothing” Legislature.

There’s another key ingredient if divided government is to work – leadership.  Leadership relies on good communication.  Power in making deals under divided government depends on each party having the sense the other has developed major public support.

n Congress and the Legislature, members need to give their leaders the support to negotiate on their behalf.

But today, GOP House Speaker John Boehner seems to be hanging onto his power by his fingertips.   

He has little scope to deal with the president.  And negotiations seem certain to be dead if the GOP takes over the Senate after this year’s elections.

On the executive side, the same need for leadership exists.  President Obama does not communicate strength and does not stimulate wide public support.  He often frames issues academically, which may be accurate but not confidence building.

Gov. LePage is the extreme opposite.  There’s nothing academic about the way he expresses his positions.  He is blunt and sometimes rude.  That may inspire his supporters, but it undermines his chances to come to terms with the Democrats.

Obama, who leaves much of the public work of government to others, has become almost invisible in the media, leaving open the question if he is really running things.  LePage is far more visible, but often more for his gaffes and partisanship than for his political initiatives.

For voters, it comes down to considering not only a candidate’s merits, but whether his or her election would promote a functioning government.  It we want less political paralysis, maybe it’s time to abandon our belief in the virtues of divided government.