Stanley Kutler: Obama v. Roberts a Pseudo-event
[Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings. This column first appeared on the Huffington Post.]
...Recently, the ABC evening news offered us the ultimately silly and misplaced story of Chief Justice John Roberts’ remarks about President Barack Obama’s criticism of his court’s recent ruling, which held that corporate campaign contributions fell under “free speech,” and could not be regulated. Once again, historical memory is sacrificed to the interests of a “good story”; we have what historian Daniel Boorstin described as a “pseudo event.”
The news reports emphasized that the president and the chief justice had become embroiled in a unprecedented public spat. Shocking; just shocking.
Andrew Jackson once famously said, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” The republic did not fall. After the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shot back, “We have been relegated to the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.” At the time, the president did not see the blessing in disguise, probably believing that the court’s narrow definition of interstate commerce threatened other New Deal measures. Fortunately, the court soon reversed itself.
In his 1937 State of the Union address, FDR was less colloquial, but even more pointed. The judiciary, he said, must not threaten “the process of our democracy ... by the denial of essential powers of free government.”
Eighty years earlier, Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered his court’s Dred Scott ruling that neither free nor slave blacks could be citizens of the United States. In his senatorial campaign the next year, Abraham Lincoln attacked the decision, and promised that his party would reverse it....
Roberts has a point. But it has been largely neglected by a media all too complicit in heightening expectations for the talk, and for providing a televised setting, filled with pre- and post-game comments, almost as if to make the speech itself old news. That was not the story the media wanted.
Obama could easily accommodate Roberts’ complaint, and simply restore the presidential practice from 1801 to 1913 and dispatch his speech for a reading by the clerk of the House. C-Span no doubt will oblige with coverage for the obsessive political junkies. Meanwhile, Congress can spare itself the exercise of constant rising or adopting Zen-like postures of silence, with folded arms. The speaker can abandon her tryouts for cheerleader. It is spectacle, with precious little substance. Meanwhile, the chief justice simply can go to a movie; surely he knows “protocol,” as he called it, is not law....
Read entire article at The Cap Times (WI)
...Recently, the ABC evening news offered us the ultimately silly and misplaced story of Chief Justice John Roberts’ remarks about President Barack Obama’s criticism of his court’s recent ruling, which held that corporate campaign contributions fell under “free speech,” and could not be regulated. Once again, historical memory is sacrificed to the interests of a “good story”; we have what historian Daniel Boorstin described as a “pseudo event.”
The news reports emphasized that the president and the chief justice had become embroiled in a unprecedented public spat. Shocking; just shocking.
Andrew Jackson once famously said, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” The republic did not fall. After the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shot back, “We have been relegated to the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.” At the time, the president did not see the blessing in disguise, probably believing that the court’s narrow definition of interstate commerce threatened other New Deal measures. Fortunately, the court soon reversed itself.
In his 1937 State of the Union address, FDR was less colloquial, but even more pointed. The judiciary, he said, must not threaten “the process of our democracy ... by the denial of essential powers of free government.”
Eighty years earlier, Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered his court’s Dred Scott ruling that neither free nor slave blacks could be citizens of the United States. In his senatorial campaign the next year, Abraham Lincoln attacked the decision, and promised that his party would reverse it....
Roberts has a point. But it has been largely neglected by a media all too complicit in heightening expectations for the talk, and for providing a televised setting, filled with pre- and post-game comments, almost as if to make the speech itself old news. That was not the story the media wanted.
Obama could easily accommodate Roberts’ complaint, and simply restore the presidential practice from 1801 to 1913 and dispatch his speech for a reading by the clerk of the House. C-Span no doubt will oblige with coverage for the obsessive political junkies. Meanwhile, Congress can spare itself the exercise of constant rising or adopting Zen-like postures of silence, with folded arms. The speaker can abandon her tryouts for cheerleader. It is spectacle, with precious little substance. Meanwhile, the chief justice simply can go to a movie; surely he knows “protocol,” as he called it, is not law....