Editorial: Obama shouldn’t politicize Supreme Court ruling
In the decades that have passed since the creation of the union, the U.S. Supreme Court has entered a number of controversial decisions. (The inexplicable one last week granting law enforcement almost unchecked leeway in demanding strip searches comes immediately to mind, for example!) But that’s the nature of the beast. More often than not, the high court deals in controversial matters.
Of all the rulings, the most controversial may well have been the per curiam decisions on Dec. 12, 2000, that effectively made George W. Bush the president of the United States. Still today, scholars and partisans debate the court’s judgment in that case.
It was an outcome that bitterly divided the nation, as any outcome inevitably had to. It also marked Al Gore’s finest moment. In his patriotic response, he became a statesman focused on bringing the nation together instead of a politician polarizing it for his own gain.
“Now it has ended, resolved as it must be resolved through the honored institutions of our democracy,” Gore said. “Over the library of one of our great law schools is inscribed the motto, ‘Not under man but under God and law.’ That’s the ruling principle of American freedom, the source of our democratic liberties. I’ve tried to make it my guide. ... Now the Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt: While I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome.”
A week ago in this space, we reflected on the Affordable Care Act and the deliberations of the Supreme Court related to its constitutionality. In that editorial, we said:
“Considering the acidic climate in Washington these days, it is very easy to imagine reactions to the court’s decision that play to political audiences. No matter the ruling, a polarizing reaction that attempts to politicize it would be small statesmanship that damages the nation. Instead, both sides should agree, now, to embrace the ruling, whatever it is, as our court’s best wisdom.”
Only a day later, President Barack Obama said a reversal of the health care measure “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. ... And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an nonelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”
To say we are disappointed by the president’s approach would be sad understatement.
While some have tried to explain away his remarks by saying he was simply responding to a reporter’s question, we’d point out that presidents do not casually comment off the tops of their heads. No, these comments were deliberate and calculated, as virtually all presidential comments are.
We don’t know if the president was attempting to influence the court’s ruling in the case. Or if he was simply setting up the court as a foil for the fall general election.
In either case, the remarks may well have been unprecedented. We’ve heard politicians decry “judicial activism” in the past, but we do not recall ever hearing it decried in advance of a court ruling.
It is inappropriate in its interference with the judicial process. No doubt, it is motivated by Obama’s commitment to affordable health care, a worthwhile cause. But it is inappropriate all the same.
In implying politics in the judicial process, Obama in fact imposed politics into it.
To the president and to his opposition, we ask again that our system of checks and balances be respected. The health care debate is a tremendously important matter, but the nation’s health matters even more.
It is time, as Gore once showed, to be bigger than politics.