Former Joplin resident Herb Van Fleet’s column in The Joplin Globe (Aug. 26) argues correctly that the power of the presidency is overestimated by the voting public.
The president does have a “bully pulpit,” but the founders wanted Congress to control finances. As everyone knows, that body has been dysfunctional for the last two years.
As a local blogger, I have been reflecting on why that is over the past two years, and I hold the extreme element of the GOP responsible.
The tea party, strengthened and emboldened by redistricting around the country, has demonized President Obama on social issues such as health care, immigration and abortion to the extent that virtually nothing he proposes, even areas of former cooperation like infrastructure and farm bills, gets advanced in the controlling House.
And then the GOP blames the president for the result. Maybe the buck stops in the Oval Office, but what if the buck never gets there? That’s what’s happening.
One thing missing from Van Fleet’s column, because of lack of space, he says, was the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates for corporate and individual wealth to have unlimited financing of negative campaigning.
That tsunami of vitriol has only begun and will soon reach a crescendo — something that I know from polls has almost everyone but the extremists disgusted. Three of the less-conservative justices are over the age of 70 now, so if Mitt Romney is elected, it is very likely that the Supreme Court will be oriented for generations even more to the right than it is. A vote for Romney and his tea party partner is a vote for extremism.
Meanwhile, anyone who expects Mitt Romney to magically turn the economy around by reducing taxes on the wealthy and eliminating environmental regulations should read Van Fleet’s column again. The president’s economic powers are very limited.
Jim Wheeler lives in Joplin
Opinion
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