Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Balkinization

Legal Commentary

: Balkinization

Tom Friedman finally begins to connect the dots

By Jack M. Balkin

The November 23 column by Tom Friedman begins as follows:

So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: ?You don?t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn?t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.?

Now you know why I don?t get invited out for dinner much these days. If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day. Forget the inaugural balls; we can?t afford them. Forget the grandstands; we don?t need them. Just get me a Supreme Court justice and a Bible, and let?s swear in Barack Obama right now ? by choice ? with the same haste we did ? by necessity ? with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One. [emphasis added]

Unfortunately, it would take too long for a majority of states to ratify such an amendment. [emphasis added.] What we can do now, though, said the Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, co-author of ?The Broken Branch,? is ?ask President Bush to appoint Tim Geithner, Barack Obama?s proposed Treasury secretary, immediately.? Make him a Bush appointment and let him take over next week. This is not a knock on Hank Paulson. It?s simply that we can?t afford two months of transition where the markets don?t know who is in charge or where we?re going. At the same time, Congress should remain in permanent session to pass any needed legislation.

Of course, the Congress that would be meeting from now through the beginning of January would be the lame-duck Congress, about which see my earlier posting today. Why in the world does Friedman believe that the obtuse Republicans in the Senate, at least half a dozen so far who are lameducks--and at least three of whom were fired by their constituents--would agree with Democrats on what counts as "needed legislation"? But I don't want to be churlish. Perhaps Friedman will be able to jump-start a serious national conversation, since at last a genuine pundit has finally figured out that our Constitution is a hindrance rather than a help. For what it is worth, incidentally, there's not a single sentence in Ornstein and Mann's otherwise fine book The Broken Branch that addresses any constitutional difficulties with Congress. And Ornstein's suggestion that Paulson be fired and replaced immediately with Tim Geithner requires acquiescence by George W. Bush, who would have to recognize that he is indeed the most abject failure in the history of the American presidency. But if he can come to that recognition, then why stop with Paulson. Why, indeed, shouldn't Friedman join his colleague Gail Collins and demand the resignation of Cheney and Bush, in that order?

Full post as published by Balkinization on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).