Politics

George Will: Obama cut classes the day they taught ‘separation of powers’ at Harvard Law

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

On NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Wednesday, Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor George Will attacked President Barack Obama for what seems to be his view of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers, saying he must have “cut class the day they got to the separation of powers because he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity.”

In an interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep, Will explained that the sort of impasses plaguing the federal government like the budget shutdown are part of what he called “the Madisonian scheme,” which intentionally makes moving the federal government in one direction difficult.

“This is the Madisonian scheme,” Will said, referring to former President James Madison, who has been called “the father of the Constitution.”

“Each institution shall be the jealous asserter of its prerogatives and try to maximize its power,” Madison continued. “I sometimes think that when he was at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama cut class the day they got to the separation of powers because he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity. Although he got 270 electoral votes and therefore gets to be president, he didn’t get everything. The Madisonian scheme is for the government to be hard to move. It’s supposed to be. People look at Washington and say, ‘Oh gosh this is so difficult.’ It’s supposed to be difficult.”

Inskeep said that although that is the Madisionian scheme, detractors of the current Republican efforts to defund Obamacare by using the purse strings as leverage are short-circuiting a system that has seemed to approve of Obamacare based on the last presidential election. But Will disagreed, noting the argument that Obamacare is the “law of the land” neglects to realize a lot of other bad laws were once laws of the land.

“How does this short-circuit the system?” he replied. “I mean, I hear Democrats say ‘the Affordable Care Act is the law’ as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law. ‘Separate but Equal’ was the law. A lot of things were the law and then we changed them. And this is part of the bruising, untidy, utterly democratic technique for changing laws.”

He added that using measures as the Republicans are doing is not unprecedented, as two prominent congressional Democrats had tried in the early 1970s.

“It’s been tried — something like that,” Will replied. “In 1973, as I’m sure you know, the debt ceiling came up and [Democrats] Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale attached a campaign finance scheme to the debt ceiling. It didn’t work. This is not novel.”

Will did admit that the strategy as it is currently being implemented by congressional Republicans won’t give the political win in this battle. But he explained that Speaker of the House John Boehner was forced to go this route by a very active constituency. He also pointed out that the Congress flexed its muscle in a similar way in 1970 when former President Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, but was stripped of funding by the passage of the Cooper-Church Amendment.

“This is why Madison, my hero, emphasized where you put the power of the purse,” he added.

Follow Jeff on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel