Send Tom Brokaw A Copy Of The Constitution

Jack Shafer laments

I'm almost certain that a samizdat chapter of the Associated Press Stylebook exists that prohibits journalists from writing anything praiseful about Republicans—except when one dies or if the Republican’s name is John McCain.

Sen. McCain, who died this week, went to his grave festooned with a bundle of the most radiant tributes from the reporters who covered him. Taking to Twitter, the airwaves and print, journalists choked back tears to gush about how much the man meant to them.

Although offering many examples, probably the sappiest and worse was when

Sunday on MSNBC, anchor Kasie Hunt had to be restrained from throwing herself on his funeral pyre as she addressed him directly. “Sen. McCain, after a decade of trying to keep up with you in those marble hallways, I know the place that you so loved is going to be a lesser place without you,” Hunt said. “My hope for this Congress and this country is that remembering and honoring your life and legacy, sir, will inspire the best among us to serve as you did. Godspeed.”

But almost all of these instances are harmless, encomiums most easily analyzed by a skilled behavioral psychologist.

Not so the tweet from Tom Brokaw, who remarked

pres trump - you are commander in chief by law, duty bound to honor sen mccain
ignoring his death is a disgrace

— Tom Brokaw (@tombrokaw) August 27, 2018

Tom Brokaw was anchorperson and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004 and has an estimated net worth of $70 million. Still, he needs to be introduced to Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads "[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."

McCain served in the Armed Forces from 1959 to 1981. His commanders in chief included Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Though Brokaw argues that by President Trump's role as commander in chief, Trump is "duty bound to honor sen mccain," Donald Trump never was John McCain's commander-in-chief. During Trump's reign, John McCain was Senator John McCain.

Donald Trump is not "duty bound to honor" Senator McCain. It is not one of the functions the Constitution mandates of a President. Rather, he is expected as a matter of decency to recognize appropriately McCain's death, which he has failed to do.

Were we to accept the notion of the president as commander in chief of citizens, our First Amendment rights would be severely abridged. If President Trump had been the Commander in Chief of a civilian such as John McCain, he is Commander in Chief of all of us. And if he is your commander in chief, you are duty bound to obey him and refrain from criticizing him. Just ask General Stanley McChrystal.

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Barack Obama, Commander-In-Chief

You would expect at least a Republican not to refer to President Obama as commander-in-chief. But there it is: former GWBush speechwriter Michael Gerson, now a columnist for The Washington Post, says the 44th President "fully inhabits the public role of commander in chief."

Barack Obama does inhabit the role of commander-in-chief. But not for me, not for Michael Gerson, and not for you- unless you're currently holding down the fort in Kabul.

The President of the United States, pursuant to Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." If commander-in-chief for anyone, President Obama has been commander-chief of Private Bradley Manning, who was serving in the 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad when he was arrested for allegedly passing classified information to the website WikiLeaks. Arrested in October 2009 and held in solitary confinement since July, 2010, Manning now, according to Politico's Josh Gerstein

is demanding that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testify as witnesses at a preliminary hearing set to begin next week.

A defense lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning made the request Friday deep in a 20-page list of defense witnesses for a so-called Article 32 hearing scheduled to start Dec. 16 at Fort Meade, Md. The hearing, akin to a probable cause hearing in the civilian justice system, is to consider whether Manning's case should be referred for a full-scale court martial.

Manning's civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, released the request for witnesses Saturday via a posting on his blog. The names of Obama and Clinton were deleted from the version Coombs posted on the internet (and hereon our site). However, their identities are evident from the explanations of why their testimony would be relevant to the case.

The defense request alleges that comments Obama made about Manning's case — and his guilt — during a political fundraiser in San Francisco in April represent "unlawful command influence" since the president acts as commander in chief of the armed forces.

"Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a superior officer in the chain of command is prohibited from saying or doing anything that could influence any decision by a subordinate in how to handle a military justice matter," the defense request says. Obama "made improper comments on 21 April 2011 when he decided to comment on PFC Manning and his case. On that date, he responded to questions regarding PFC Manning's alleged actions by concluding that 'We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He [PFC Manning] broke the law.'"

Obama made the comments while shaking hands at a fundraiser where some guests earlier burst out in song to protest Manning's treatment. The president's back and forth about Manning was captured on a mobile phone camera.

Coombs said he wants to question Obama about the "nature of his discussions with members of the military regarding this case and whether he has made any other statements that would either influence the prosecution of this case or PFC Manning's right to obtain a fair trial." Manning's defense also wants to ask Obama about the alleged lack of impact of WikiLeaks's disclosure of the leaked U.S. military reports on Afghanistan, as well as open government issues and the phenomenon of overclassification.

Raise your hand if you believe Barack Obama, Private Manning's commander-in-chief, will testify at the preliminary hearing.

No hand appears raised. President Obama is claimed by the mainstream media as our Commander-in-Chief. He appears to have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and judged before the fact a criminal matter, likely prejudicing a hearing. And he might be held exempt from testifying.

If President Obama chooses, or is forced, to testify, he will be fulfilling a function in his role as Commander-in-Chief. If he is held exempt (and chooses not to testify), it will make a mockery of Article II, Section 2. And we will welcome the outrage which no doubt would ensue from Michele Bachmann and other tea party supporters who claim a fidelity to the United States Constitution unrivaled by anyone.

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Decisive, With An Exclamation Point

Just as I suspected, I would have told myself if this article had been written, and I had read it, a week ago. President Obama seemed intimidated by the Pentagon. Michael Hastings noted in Rolling Stone

The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass.

Gee, I guess, not anymore:

President Barack Obama fired his top Afghanistan commander on Wednesday over inflammatory comments that enraged the White House, and vowed not to let the military shakeup undermine the U.S. war effort.

In an extraordinary turn of events, Obama called General Stanley McChrystal on the carpet at the White House, relieved him of command and replaced him with his boss, General David Petraeus, architect of the Iraq war turnaround.

Obama had summoned McChrystal from Afghanistan to answer for remarks he and his aides made in an explosive Rolling Stone magazine article that disparaged the president and other civilian leaders.

"The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden as he announced McChrystal's dismissal.

Periodically, politicians and media figures blithely identify the President of the United States as "commander in chief." Ironically, rarely (from what I could tell) was that term used today, although this was a situation to which Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution applies:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States....

General McChrystal deserved to be fired; or, as in this case, to have his resignation accepted. And President Obama needed to reassert the principle of civilian control over the military.

Replacing McChrystal with General David Petraeus, although an obviously wise option strategically and politically, was a stroke of genius. Unexpected by the media, it nearly removes the threat Petraeus posed as a possible candidate for the Republican nomination to oppose Obama in 2012. If the war in Afghanistan continues to go badly, it will be tough for Petraeus to mount a serious campaign, especially with the blemish on what is now his extraordinary public image; if the war effort turns around and Petraeus is nominated by the GOP, he will be running against the President who presided over the war. Besides, Petraeus is the individual given greatest credit for what is perceived as renewed success in Iraq- and Afghanistan now is the most important theatre in American foreign policy.

President Obama does not always convey an image of strength. Today, June 23, 2010, however, he became President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, enjoying one of his best days since January 23, 2009.

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In response to a non-question question from Chris Wallace on the 12/21 edition of Fox News Sunday, Vice-President Dick Cheney argued:

Well, I just fundamentally disagree with him. He also said that the -- all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution. Well, they’re not. Article 1 of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch.

Joe’s been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can’t keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive.

So I think -- I write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don’t take it seriously. And if he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call.

I think that President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president. And apparently, from the way they’re talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I’ve had during my time.

Cheney is right- Joe Biden does not expect to have "as consequential a role as" Cheney has had in advancing the policies and programs of arguably the worst President ever, and inarguably the worst President in recent times. But he's wrong when he says that Biden "wants to diminish the office of vice president."

It is virtually impossible to diminish the office of the vice president. It's highly unlikely that the former Delaware senator will be reluctant to "be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided;" Biden will be only too happy to cast the deciding vote in a 50-50 split. And simple common sense (unsurprisingly lacking in a guy who would shoot his hunting companion) would suggest that no vice president would shrink from assuming responsibility when "in Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President..."

There you have it, Mr. Cheney: The two constitutional duties of the vice-president and to suggest that Mr. Biden would diminish the office is to argue that he would refuse either of those roles. Not likely.

Still, it's not surprising. Asked about "the powers of the president relative to Congress and the courts during the war," Cheney claimed "but we have exercised, I think, the legitimate authority of the president under Article 2 of the Constitution as commander in chief in order to put in place policies and programs that have successfully defended the nation."

But Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution does not authorize the President to be "commander in chief." It makes the President "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States...." And it doesn't stop there. It specifies (after the ....) "when called into the actual Service of the United States." So no one, constitutionally, is commander in chief- and the President is commander in chief of the armed forces only when "called into the actual Service of the United States."

Author/historian Garry Wills points out "We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon." Now, however, aided by the promiscuous use of the term "commander in chief" or "commander in chief of the United States, "the glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements."

This is a bipartisan error. Campaigning in Ohio on Halloween, Joe Biden declared " after next Tuesday, the very critics he has now and the rest of America will be calling him something else - they will be calling him the 44th president of the United States of America, our commander in chief Barack Obama!"

That may simply have been Biden being Biden. Growth of the "commander in chief" rhetoric during the last eight years, however, has better enabled the Bush Administration to cook the intelligence about a misguided war, spy on American citizens, and implement a torture regime. Instead, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald has noted, "with regard to Americans generally, the president is not our 'commander' but instead our elected public servant, subject to the mandates of the law like every other citizen and subordinate to the will of the people."

Article Of The Week

.... or, rather, blog post of the week, which comes from ever-thorough Glenn Greenwald of salon.com, who notes (in a quick and easy read):

Poor John McCain: Forced against his honor to run an ugly campaign

Time's Ana Marie Cox, in a Bloggingheads discussion with Ann Althouse, does an excellent job of expressing what is still, amazingly enough, the prevailing media view of John McCain: namely, that this deeply honorable and principled man is vehemently opposed to running an ugly, dirty campaign against Barack Obama, and that is happening despite McCain's deep opposition to such campaigns and the way it profoundly violates his code of honor. Cox, who is traveling with the McCain campaign (yet again), first shared a few memories and sentiments about her experiences with the candidate over the years:

When I got on the plane the other day, McCain said hi to me. . . .
When he had that conflict with that crowd in Minneapolis, or Lakeview, that really energized him. Going on offense against his own voters and supporters in this weird way made him more energetic. . . .
Some of the happiest times I had with John McCain are when everyone counted him out.

When asked by Althouse (who, fairness compels me to acknowledge, was surprisingly reasonable here) about the "Obama-is-a-Terrorist" tactics the McCain campaign has been using and whether some of those tactics attempt to stoke nationalistic or racist sentiments, Cox repeatedly contended that such tactics are deeply anathema to the noble spirit and elevated soul of John McCain:

Cox: What McCain's reacting to, is something that other Republicans are reacting to, iscu the kind of ugliness of the criticisms [towards] Obama. I think McCain in his heart of heart wants to win this fair and square. He wants to win this because he's the better candidate. He doesn't want to win this because people think Obama is a Muslim or is a terrorist or he's not really American. He wants to win this on his own merits. It upsets his sense of fair play -- to win -- to think that the support he's getting is because of what he thinks are bad reasons. . .
Althouse: But in the last month or so, he's been losing ground, and resorting to this terrorist meme --
Cox: I think that hasn't worked for them. I think they recognize that to the extent that that does work, that's not how McCain wants to win.
I adore the guy. I think he's fantastic in many ways. I respect him, I admire his service to the country. I think ultimately he's very principled and, to coin a phrase, honorable. . . .
I do think that McCain is one of the most unique individuals that I've ever personally met. As I said, I greatly admire him and think he's sort of an amazing person . . .
[The McCain campaign], not out of malice or intent, didn't allow themselves to think through how some of these images would be taken by their audience.

McCain has spent weeks overtly linking Obama to "terrorists" and "Palestinian donors" and posing the sinister question: "Who is the real Barack Obama"? Right this very minute, the McCain/Palin campaign is running massive robocalls in numerous battleground states, including North Carolina, alleging that Obama "has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans" and, if elected, "will enact an extreme leftist agenda." Last night on national television, McCain vehemently defended Sarah Palin's repellent and patently false accusation that Obama "is pallin' around with terrorists."

But McCain's vaunted principles and honor make him absolutely hate these tactics and he vehemently does not want to win this way. "It upsets his sense of fair play to think that the support he's getting is because of what he thinks are bad reasons." It just keeps happening despite McCain.

And what of the fact that these ads and accusations have spawned the widespread, hateful perception among the GOP base that Obama is a foreign, Muslim, un-American, subversive-Black-Terrorist? Why, the naive and innocent strategists running the McCain campaign had absolutely no idea that such a thing would happen. They just failed "to think through how some of these images would be taken by their audience" -- but "not out of malice or intent" (probably just due to time constraints; they've been really busy lately and didn't have time to contemplate what perceptions their attacks would unwittingly spawn).

It's not a coincidence that the hardest-hitting interviews of McCain have been conducted by everyone except the national press corps that follows him. Last night, David Letterman -- the comic -- grilled McCain about his relationship with convicted felon and post-Watergate extremist G. Gordon Liddy after McCain claimed that Obama associates with terrorists, the first time (to my knowledge) McCain has been asked about his friendship with Liddy despite its being written about for months. And the toughest and most adversarial interviews of McCain came from the hosts of The View and from a reporter on a local news station in Maine (here).

The national press corps continues to revere John McCain despite what is widely acknowledged to be the toxic and ugly campaign he's running because they still think that this campaign is being run despite McCain's character and wishes, not because of them. The idea that someone should be judged by their actual conduct never seems to occur to them, nor do they accept what ought to be the rather self-evident proposition that someone who repeatedly does dishonorable things is, by definition, dishonorable. By their fruits ye shall know them. Or, as former/long-time McCain-lover Andrew Sullivan put it:

I'm afraid that [Atlantic Editor] Jim [Fallows] is dealing with what we're all dealing with: the fact that the myth we had of McCain is, in fact, a lie. The real McCain - dishonest, dishonorable and despicable - is now in plain sight. To say I'm disillusioned would be an understatement. The last six weeks have shown us all something we'd rather never have found out. But we can't ignore it now, can we?

Some obviously can -- and are.

Cox does say that she doesn't intend to vote for McCain because the way he has run his campaign demonstrates that he's too scattershot and "erratic" (a word that Cox, fairly enough, accuses the Obama campaign of using as "code for senile"). But in explaining that, this is what Cox says:

As I said, I greatly admire him and think he's sort of an amazing person but that doesn't meant I want him to have control of my country's future in his hands. . . . I don't particularly want my commander-in-chief to have that whimsical attitude towards government.

If I could be granted one small wish about our political discourse, it would be that reporters and pundits would accept -- as disappointing and unglorious as it is -- that, under our Constitution and basic government design, people who aren't in the military don't have a "Commander-in-Chief." The President isn't your "commander," and the "Commander-in-Chief" power, now synonymous in our political culture with "President," is actually extremely limited (Art. II, Sec. 2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States").

This endless festishization of "President as Our Commander-in-Chief" is one of those small but pernicious reflections of how militarized we've become, of how we are a society in a state of perpetual and endless war. And -- though I don't think there's a strong complaint to be made that the media generally has been unfair to Barack Obama -- this "Commander-in-Chief" fetish is also one of the principal causes of the ongoing media reverence for John S. McCain.

Greenwald correctly notes that the American civilians do not have a Commander-in-Chief and that the President is not Commander-in-Chief but specifically Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. It is an important distinction in a nation which (once) prided itself on civilian control of the military, before elected members of Congress who question war policy were dismissed as opponents of "the generals" and "the troops."

Generously, in running quickly through McCain's "ugly" campaign, Greenwald omits the disingenuous effort to link Obama to ACORN which, given the GOP's ongoing effort to subvert the vote, might be likened to "psychological projection," if it weren't deliberate and insidious. And although I am not privy to the motive of the Obama campaign's criticism of the Arizona senator as "erratic," it is possible to be erratic (as McCain is) without being senile (as McCain isn't). (It is unfair to the elderly to imply that only senile individuals can be erratic.) Still, reading this posting (as has the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate) can remind us that John McCain has not shifted from the maverick of 2000 to the obedient right-winger of 2008; he is the same John McCain, adopting whatever tactics most likely to bring victory.

The Speech- no. 5

In her long-awaited (by the media, which couldn't get her to do this fast enough) concession speech today, June 7, 2008, Senator Clinton addressed the "historic" issue:

Now, think how much progress we’ve already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

Could an African-American really be our president? And Senator Obama has answered that one.

Mrs. Clinton is half-right. Although we have not determined whether a woman can, or will, be elected president, we have answered the question as to whether a woman can serve as commander-in-chief.

Probably several things contributed to this perception of strength including, but not limited, to: the criticism of Obama over negotiations with Iran; Clinton's vile comment about the "lifetime of experience" she and McCain bring while Obama brings "a speech;" her willingness to "totally obliterate Iran" if it attacks Israel with nuclear weapons; the 3:00 a.m. spot; even her unwillingness to express regret (pp. 16-17 of MSNBC transcript), until the 2/26/08 debate in Cleveland, Ohio, for her vote in 2002 authorizing military action against iraq. But clearly she did answer the question about a woman as commander-in-chief- though, notably, not as president (she isn't being nominated, after all), which she pointedly did not claim.

But has Senator Obama answered the question whether an African-American can become president? Not unless (sarcasm alert) this is November 5, John McCain has fallen short of 270 delegates, and we finally have put aside eight years of inept Repub rule.