Leon Wolf has some fun explaining why President Obama’s actions in the Inspector General firing scandal show Obama relying on the Unitary Executive Theory.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that; we conservatives have been standing up for Justice Scalia’s view of the unitary nature of executive power – and the democratic accountability it promotes – for years. It’s the people who blathered about it during the Bush years who didn’t know what they were talking about, and now have to pretend that they were in favor of this kind of thing all along, much the way they only learned to despise the Independent Counsel when they found themselves on the receiving end of it.
3 thoughts on “The More Things Change…”
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“It’s the people who blathered about it during the Bush years who didn’t know what they were talking about…”
Joe Biden didn’t know what he was talking about? Say it ain’t so!
Back in 1988, at the tail end of the Reagan Administration, there was a guy at one of the banking regulatory agencies (I’ve forgotten his name now) who was making a holy mess of things, and people were clamoring for his removal, including in the Dem-controlled Congress. The statute said he could be removed only for cause. I had a friend who was working at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, and I said to him:
“You know what Reagan should do? He should fire this guy’s butt and say, ‘I’m firing him for no cause at all, just because I want to replace him.’ No one would object, and Reagan would have a precedent.”
My friend looked at me strangely, and said quietly, “We’ve been discussing that idea.”
Reagan didn’t fire him, of course.
Not that it’s important or anything, but I missed a couple of details. It was M. Danny Wall, the head of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and it was in 1989, when Bush 41 was in office.
NY Times, July 9, 1989: Showdown Time for Danny Wall