09-11-2018, 12:42 PM
(09-11-2018, 12:26 PM)hollodero Wrote: Same here :) I get your point. Especially when a presient breaks norm after norm, you don't want to react to that development by starting to break norms as well. I see the building staggering. I just don't think a staggering building is stabilized by not reacting to the situation. Which, in short, is: Times changed.
Obama breaks a norm out of concern for national security. That is how I see it, that's what I believe I can reasonably assume. This isn't about the ACA or some policy, it's about the demise of the presidency and the threat that poses. I feel, at some point there are bigger responsibilities that can appear for ex-presidents, even if they weren't previously defined. Now if concerns like those are valid, I dare not say. I just see an ex-president worried not about policy, but about democracy and all the things that held it together.
Isn't it a moral imperative to break a norm if one sees a threat like that? When there's more and more obviously good reason to?
OK. I agree. But they don't. That's not Obama's fault, he did disappear alright, wrote his book and upheld all the norms. Now he's filling a void that should have been filled by now. But whom should he pass any torch to? He can't just crown someone.
I think he is saying there are plenty of people, like a whole lot, who are reacting. It's not necessary for this particular individual to react. He could start promoting other people who are reacting. I mean this norm is going to be blown up in a few years, but now he's got precedent.
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”-Thurgood Marshall
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