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YOO GIVES US A LESSON IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.
John Yoo:"This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on."
This is all in the context of an opinion piece dedicated to describing the Democratic Party as inherently undemocratic. Leaving aside that it's John "wiretap 'n' torture" Yoo who's making this argument, it astonishes me that he can't even accurately describe how presidents get elected in this country. Yoo claims that presidents are directly elected by the people so that they can remain independent of Congress. I guess he slept through Constituional Law 101 at Yale because that's not what Article II says (hey, explains his unitary executive theories, too!). Anyone who took elementary civics knows that presidents are chosen by electors who are chosen by the several states, which them makes beholden, if anything, to those several states.
As if this isn't bad enough, Yoo then goes on to describe the 2008 election as akin to that of 1824, where John Quincy Adams won on electors, rather than the popular vote, and the matter was settled in Congress (bad!), just as Art. II, section 1 specifies. Curious Yoo wouldn't think of a more contemporary example like, say, the election of his former boss, but then it wouldn't be a Democrat usurping the will of the people which leaves the question of why the WSJ would publish something like this in the first place.
--Mori Dinauer
COMMENTS (11)
Also, I have a vague memory of Jimmy Carter winning (as opposed to being "crushed") when he ran in 1976 as an "insurgent." Pity there's no way of verifying that. I guess I'll just have to trust Dr. Woo.
Posted by: wolfstar | March 24, 2008 4:37 PM
It gets worse:
"Yoo then goes on to describe the 2008 election as akin to that of 1828, where Andrew Jackson won on electors, rather than the popular vote, and the matter was settled in Congress (bad!) . . . ."
Huh? I think this was the Election of 1824, when Jackson won the popular vote, but (because there were four candidates) failed to get the required clear majority of the Electoral College. The election was then handed over to the House of Representatives, where Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams, who then became President and named Clay his Secretary of State [the position then regarded as reserved for the heir apparent]. Jackson's partisans famously condemned the "corrupt bargain," and proceeded to swamp Adams in 1828.
[Oh--I just checked Yoo's piece; he got it right; you got it wrong].
Posted by: David in Nashville | March 24, 2008 4:49 PM
Not to mention that state legislatures specifically have the power to override the popular vote in their respective states and select the state's slate of electors (see Florida legislature, 2000)
Posted by: badger | March 24, 2008 4:52 PM
David: You're absolutely correct. In my mind I saw "1824," with my fingers I typed "1828." Post has been corrected.
Posted by: Mori Dinauer | March 24, 2008 4:54 PM
Actually, the post is still not correct. Andrew Jackson did not win the election of 1824, JQA did.
Posted by: SalHepatica | March 24, 2008 4:59 PM
I was surprised that Federalist Paper #69 (by Hamilton) refutes each of the specific arguments for the "unitary executive", as well as the unspoken analogy between the President and a king.
Posted by: H-Bob | March 24, 2008 5:23 PM
SalHepatica: Thanks for the catch. Same phenomenon as the 1824-1824 debacle, and post has been corrected.
Posted by: Mori Dinauer | March 24, 2008 5:32 PM
Well, if we're going back to the early 19th c, I think more than a few of them were "elected" by Congressmen throwing their weight around. Thomas Jefferson was put in office (over Aaron Burr) by the other party after, there's evidence to suggest, he agreed not to kill the national bank the other party was getting rich off as holders of the national debt, for example.
I think it was just radically different. Which is to say that, constitutionally, it's probably the case that citizens have the freedom to go out of their way to justify whatever the Democratic Party wants or to think about what they really want.
It seems to me that this whole primary was contrived by 2004 primary loser, Howard Dean. I don't see how it is that Dean and/or Ferraro and their plans can't be entirely undone.
If anything, the Republicans *will* make all of this a big issue in the election, in order to re-position themselves as the party of American principles and the Democratic Party conveniently played right into their hands.
Which also means Obama should have supported a re-vote in Michigan. Instead, he went live on sports radio (of all things) with his "typical white person" gloss on his epic Pastor Wright speech.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 24, 2008 6:42 PM
Oh, for the days when the constitutional law experts actually had to read the document in question and understand it...
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty | March 24, 2008 9:38 PM
Personally I tended to see the election of 2000 as the parallel to the election of 1876.
Disputes over popular votes versus state government reported results.
Posted by: Tom - Daai Tou Laam | March 24, 2008 10:17 PM
Multiple problems with Yoo's post, not the least of which being that there is some evidence that the Founders thought that there would be few elections where one candidate got an absolute majority of the electors, and they expected Congress would be picking the president from among the top three.
Posted by: dan | March 25, 2008 12:30 AM