I confess I was profoundly shocked when President Obama attacked the recent Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC at the State of the Union last night.
It was, if nothing else, extremely unpresidential—indeed downright unseemly—to dress down a co-equal branch of the federal government, to their faces, in a forum in which they could not reply. (Although it seems as though Justice Alito did reply, and in a way that provides the perfect soundbite to ensure that it be repeated and discussed over and over on television today.) Worse, he treated the Supreme Court as though it were a policy-making body that had come up with a bad policy that needed to be changed rather than a decision as to whether a law squared with the Constitution.
But as Jennifer has referred to, it was something else: it was wrong. He misconstrued the reach of the decision. Citizens United does not allow foreign corporations to contribute to American political campaigns.
For someone who has presented himself as a constitutional scholar, this is all very embarrassing. And it is likely to erase everything else he had to say in the public’s perception of the speech.
The White House positively crawls with lawyers and has instant access to any scholar in the country. Couldn’t it have run this part of the speech passed someone who knew what he was talking about before the president stood before the entire country and showed that he didn’t know what he was talking about?
Ira Stoll gives four reasons why he didn’t like the speech, calling the president a phony. The president is also, it seems, incompetent.