54 MPG & Veal Oscar for Nixon

  

Richard Nixon was a veal Oscar kind of guy. I mean the imperial presidency, Watergate and all that. But mostly it was the way over the top, gaudy and ridiculously ostentatious garb he foisted on the Whitehouse uniformed security staff that tipped his hand.

Like Nixon's uniforms, veal Oscar is kind of over the top. It is a plate of breaded veal cutlets, first topped with asparagus then crab meat and finally all is sauced with an egg yolk-butter based hollandaise or béarnaise sauce.

It’s all a little much, pretentiously combining a number of plain and simple things and doing justice to none. It’s a pompous meal first cooked up to suit the fancy of Sweden’s King Oscar II. It more reflects imperial fiat rather than culinary art.

I made it once and concluded breaded veal cutlets served simply with buttered asparagus and garnished with a wedge of lemon does honor to both. And save the crab for another meal, or a simple appetizer before the main dish.

In food and fashion imperial pretentions are harmless, in governing ruinous. It seems it wasn't just Nixon's White House guard uniforms that tended toward imperial. His administration was steeped in it.

The term imperial presidency, according to Wikipedia, surfaced in the 1960s. The concept of the president governing beyond constitutional bounds was formalized by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Imperial Presidency, first published in 1973. The book was an historical perspective and critique of President Nixon’s conduct, particularly in regard to foreign affairs. In the introduction to the Mariner Edition to the book, Schlesinger writes:

“In August 1998 I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “So Much for the Imperial Presidency.” . . .

“Alas, the obituaries were premature. I had written the Imperial Presidency in the latter days of Richard M. Nixon. The American Constitution, the book argues, envisages a strong presidency with an equally strong system of accountability. When the constitutional balance is upset in favor of presidential power and at the expense of presidential accountability, the presidency can be said to become imperial.”

In the introduction he takes issue with the Patriot Act and the abuses to which it opens a wide door. The imperial presidency is back. But Schlesinger is wrong. Its reach extends far beyond excesses based on national security concerns. Now, its origins lie in a multitude of laws enacted since the 1970s when Schlesinger’s book first appeared.

Since then we have allowed a similar unbridled reach of federal authority into almost every aspect of our social and economic lives. By and large this expansion, motivated by the best of intentions, has occurred regardless of which party was in power through expansive legislation.

But each new law, to varying degrees and too often startlingly so, grants additional ambiguous authority to the executive branch. It is an authority that the executive can use in entirely novel and unexpected ways without any accountability and more importantly without the consent of the people, without legislative oversight.

So the headline in The Hill reads “Obama, EPA actions make cap-and-trade more likely.” [Full Text] Sadly, it is a headline that is unlikely to cause any of us so much as to raise an eyebrow. Worse, both Congress and the Senate are asleep. We’ve been caught napping too.

The article’s lead calmly proclaims: “President Obama’s use of executive authority and his Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) interpretation of existing laws might have laid the groundwork for renewed cap-and-trade efforts experts said Wednesday.”

In short, the article, through former EPA secretary Carol Browner’s assessment, envisions new regulations that are so onerous and costly that they will force industry beg for relief through carbon cap-and-trade alternatives.

We the people will pay for costly reductions in carbon emissions without ever engaging in a debate on carbon forced anthropogenic global warming. On a different front we will pay considerably more for cars and light duty trucks as auto makers are forced to meet a 54 mpg mandate. [Full Text] What would you call these additional costs? Consumer compliance tax?

It’s no small thing. In 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration commissioned a study to quantify federal regulatory compliance costs imposed on American business. That study pegged annual regulatory compliance costs at a staggering $1.75 trillion. For perspective, if this cost was distributed equally it would amount to $15,586 per American household. It’s 50 percent more than all private spending on health care. (Full Text)

That’s not the worst of it. Through executive orders we are no longer equal under the law and our imperial presidency has veto powers over existing legislation. On this Thomas Sowell, in an Investor Business Daily editorial wrote [Full Text]:    

“When a president can ignore the plain language of duly passed laws, and substitute his own executive orders, then we no longer have “a government of laws, and not men” but a president ruling by decree, like a dictator in some banana republic.

“When we confine our debates to merits or demerits of particular executive orders, we are tacitly accepting arbitrary rule. The Constitution of the United States cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution. But, if we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the details of particular policies imposed by executive orders, and vote solely on that basis, then we have failed to protect the Constitution – and ourselves.”

Today, September 13, Federal Reserve Chairman, "helicopter Ben" Bernanke said the treasury will begin printing up to $40 Billion a month to buy down federal debt. I don't recall congress debating this radical policy, much less voting upon it.

If we are to endure an imperial presidency and its court, we should probably drag the Nixonian uniforms out of the attic and make those governing us wear them. As for the bazar hats, they could be different colors, variously identifying members of legislature and their staff, the White House, the administrative agencies, and lobbyists. Bernanke's hat should be red.  

Should we do so, upon visiting Washington our home grown imperialism would shockingly be on full display.