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The organizing principle of the administration’s foreign policy is one of weakness and passivity, coupled with a conspicuous rhetorical abdication of American leadership, write David Rivkin and Lee Casey.

by David B. Rivkin, Jr. , Lee A. Casey | September 21, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

A few days ago on The Daily Beast, Leslie Gelb praised President Obama’s handling of the unfolding crisis in the Middle East last week and evidently discerns no connection between the ensuing wave of anti-American violence and the broader parameters of American foreign policy. He is wrong on both counts. The administration’s crisis management has been mediocre. Even more fundamentally, the current assault on America’s position in the Middle East is attributable not to the trailer for an obscure anti-Muslim movie, but to Obama’s own foreign-policy failures.

The administration’s crisis-management strategy continues to emphasize its regret about that film, Innocence of Muslims. This was manifest not only in the original (and subsequently retracted) statement from our embassy in Cairo, but in all statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president. But deploring efforts to denigrate Muslim religious beliefs is only the first half of the sentence. The administration should have also robustly propounded its commitment to the virtues and values of free expression in a free society, and why this must necessarily encompass offensive speech. Whenever the White House mentions the First Amendment these days, it is done mostly in a defensive mode, by way of explaining (almost in sorrow) to the Muslim world why the U.S. government cannot legally suppress anti-Muslim films rather than a compelling explanation of why such films should not be suppressed. As Clinton stated on Sept. 14, “I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day.” But simply saying that free speech is enshrined in our Constitution “is not enough” the administration must explain why that is a good thing to which they too should aspire.

The administration also has failed to tell the Muslim world that Western critics of religion, far from singling out Islam, regularly unleash a torrent of offensive speech directed at Christianity and Judaism. In addition, no senior administration official has seen fit to elucidate any historical perspective on America’s relationship with the Islamic world, including our unparalleled record of support for Muslim causes. Brief references to U.S. support for the Libyan revolution is not sufficient” this must be at the center of our message to the Muslim world. America and its NATO allies have spent their own blood and treasure to protect Muslims facing slaughter and oppression in places ranging from Afghanistan to Bosnia to Kosovo to Iraq.

Equally lacking has been any public manifestation of the administration’s anger about the anti-American demonstrations that have taken place over the last week. Simply condemning violence is not enough. The administration must make clear that there can be no justification for any protests against America as a country simply because some private Americans have exercised their First Amendment rights in an offensive manner. And Washington’s failure to do so is viewed as the ultimate manifestation of American guilt, thus enflaming, rather than calming, the situation.

The administration has also conspicuously failed to criticize publicly President Mohammed Morsi and other Arab leaders, whose responses to the anti-American demonstrations have been slow, equivocal, and relatively ineffective. Indeed, to this day Morsi has condemned violence but endorsed the anti-American protests from which it ensues. The fact that the Egyptian prosecutor-general has found time to indict several American citizens, allegedly associated with the production of an anti-Islamic film, is both a violation of international law and a sign of disrespect for the United States.

The ultimate irony for an administration oft-praised for superior rhetoric is that in today’s tightly knit global environment, words have palpable consequences.

Morsi’s behavior is particularly deplorable because the U.S. was instrumental in bringing him to power, first by easing out President Hosni Mubarak and later by playing the leading role in restraining the Egyptian military during the post-Mubarak transition. The fact that Morsi has unimpeachable Islamic credentials, and is therefore in an excellent position to both speak out forcibly and act robustly against anti-Americanism, makes the administration’s failure to call him to account all the more glaring.

But all of this flawed crisis management pales in comparison with the administration’s strategic failures. The organizing principle of the administration’s foreign policy is one of weakness and passivity “whether in dealing with Russia, China, or Venezuela” coupled with a conspicuous rhetorical abdication of American leadership, evident in speeches by the president, secretary of state, and other administration officials. The ultimate irony for an administration oft-praised for superior rhetoric is that in today’s tightly knit global environment, words have palpable consequences.

This overarching problem is accentuated by the fact that everybody in the Middle East “our friends, foes, and folks in between” has correctly concluded that the administration has begun America’s disengagement from the region, on a scale unseen since the days of the British withdrawal from “East of Suez”. This has manifested itself in virtually every facet of our Middle East policy, from our failure to maintain any American military presence in Iraq and the consequent loss of diplomatic and economic influence in Baghdad; to Washington’s unwillingness to rally the American public to support our military efforts in Afghanistan and its repeated snubs of our strongest traditional Middle East ally, Israel; to our leading from behind on Libya and the total failure to lead from any direction on Syria; and last but not least, to our timidity in confronting the Iranian nuclear weapons program. As a result, the Middle East elites and the proverbial “Arab street” have concluded that the U.S. is a waning power, Israel’s future is one of a besieged state that someday may disappear from the regional chessboard, and Iran has an excellent chance of becoming a regional hegemon, to be feared and placated.

These are self-inflicted wounds. The American disengagement has not been caused by military defeat or some adverse international developments that we have tried but failed to stop, but by an administration that has profoundly misunderstood the kind of world we live in, the types of threats we confront, and what constitutes vital American interests. The administration has amassed not just a middling or even moderately bad foreign-policy record, but an appalling one. It is this record that is shaping the way the governments in the Middle East are handling the anti-American unrest. Unless the record is decisively reversed, it will lead to many disastrous developments down the road.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/21/not-just-the-middle-east-obama-foreign-policy-record-is-appalling.html

In "Reading Law," Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and legal writer Bryan A. Garner argue for paying close attention to the original meaning of the words in the Constitution and other legal documents.

(published in The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2012)

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR.

For many years now, a debate has raged over how best to interpret the Constitution and other canonical legal texts. One way of grouping the warring parties is to divide them according to their views of writing itself—the words on the page. The textualists feel a strong loyalty, even a moral commitment, to the words themselves and the meanings they were intended to convey. The non-textualists have a very different approach, guided by a peculiar view of democratic society and the law.

Like the government in Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange"—setting out to adjust the behavior of inherently flawed men and women—non-textualists see the American electorate as a collection of people in need of improvement and democracy as too error-prone to do the job. Their solution is to vest judges with the ability to "adjust" the law in order to ensure a more "progressive" direction, loosely interpreting the wording of statutes and the Constitution and sometimes disregarding the wording entirely. The result is a search for non-democratic shortcuts as the best way to promote fairness and social justice.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and legal writer Bryan A. Garner are having none of it. In "Reading Law," they argue forcefully for a textualist approach—for interpreting legal documents, especially the Constitution, by focusing on written words in their original meaning. Along the way, the authors debunk the claims of the non-textualists, who, they say, seek to deconstruct the language, imposing on it a content that was never expressed. Such an effort, they note, defeats the whole purpose of communication and substitutes the reader's ideas for those of the writer.

Textualism, the authors claim, is inherent in written language itself, which enables writers to convey their ideas with specificity and precision. Thus in Anglo-American jurisprudence, textualism has been the guiding interpretive method for centuries, the bedrock assumption of judges as well as legislators. "Reading Law" offers a panoply of examples from English and American history in which the original meaning of written words has guided decisions over rival claims—from a run-of-the-mill land deed to the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution. To trace textualism's deep roots, the authors describe a Scottish statute, circa 1427, which, as they put it, "made it a punishable offense for counsel to argue anything other than the original understanding."

Though other approaches have always jostled for supremacy, a full assault on textualism—embodied in such ideas as the "living Constitution"—dates only to the mid-20th century. One of the central claims of the non-textualists is that language is too slippery, and meaning too "relative," to allow for consensus and clarity. But in fact, the authors say, there is an extraordinary amount of agreement about the intended meaning of most legal texts, even if there is still room for interpretive dispute. It is only in a small minority of politically and socially sensitive cases, they note, that non-textualists allegedly cannot discern the written text's original meaning.

But of course the real disagreement over the role of texts in law has to do with both method and purpose. The non-textualists—whether judges, lawyers or law professors—are keen, above all, to promote a particular outcome, and the original meaning of a text can get in the way. Non-textualism, by contrast, empowers the reader (or judge) to do as he pleases. Such a freewheeling approach is a problem in nearly any context, but it is especially pernicious in the law, where precision, predictability and legitimacy are so important. In any democracy, and particularly in our constitutional system, non-textualism transfers power from the people to unelected judges.

Not surprisingly, it is in construing the Constitution that non-textualists make their strongest stand. Justice Stephen Breyer, the judiciary's foremost opponent of the original-meaning approach, is candid enough about his motivations. In his 2010 book, titled "Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View," Justice Breyer wonders: "Why would people want to live under the 'dead hand' of an eighteenth-century constitution that preserved not enduring values but specific eighteenth-century thoughts about how those values then applied?" A textualist might answer that, if today's citizens don't like what the 18th-century Founders decided upon—and what they put down in a document that was, after all, ratified by democratic vote—they can amend it.

As the authors make their argument for textualism, they are eager to show that it is a good deal more than a dull and primitive literalism. They cite passages from Shakespeare and from case law to reveal, for example, the ways in which "associated words" in a list or grouping point toward certain definitions and eliminate others. Similarly, generalizations in the law (e.g., the phrase "any other person") may be more precise than an over-literal reading might suggest, depending on the specific nouns that come before or after. Drawing on statutes, amusing hypotheticals and the work of distinguished legal philosophers, the authors present 57 "canons" that should govern text-based legal thinking and judgment. They also expose 13 "falsities"—for example, "the half-truth that consequences of a decision provide the key to sound interpretation."

Justice Scalia and Mr. Garner have written a remarkable book that reshapes the long-running debate about what it means to be a judge and the very role of the law in our polity. It is also a compelling guide to interpreting legal documents, certain to be used by legal practitioners and scholars. The authors, it should be noted, do not suggest that textualism leads to easy comity among jurists or anyone else. They concede that, even if minds agree on meaning, "hearts often disagree on what is right." The answer, though, is not for judges to impose their idea of right, and thereby distort the law, but to concentrate on "what an enacted law means," an effort that requires "discipline and self-abnegation."

Mr. Rivkin, a constitutional lawyer, served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

A version of this article appeared August 29, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Triumph Of the Text.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577589613733295148.html?mod=asia_opinion

The President has taken a hatchet to welfare reform, the immigration laws, and 'No Child Left Behind.'

(published in The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2012)

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY

On July 12, President Obama unilaterally gutted the Clinton administration's signature achievement—welfare reform. The 1996 welfare-reform law, while passed with strong bipartisan support, has been the bane of progressives, who have never accepted its fundamental principle that those who can work must work. Over the last year, the Obama administration also took the hatchet to the immigration laws and to the Bush-era "No Child Left Behind" statute.

These actions have two things in common. First, they were announced with much fanfare and designed to appeal to the president's liberal base. Second, and much worse, they were implemented by suspending enforcement or waiving applications of laws Mr. Obama does not like.

The president cannot write—or rewrite—the laws. The Constitution makes Congress the legislature, and the president cannot simply ignore its decisions.

The entire system of separation of powers—which is the heart of the Constitution's "checks and balances" designed to limit governmental power and thereby protect individual liberty—depends upon each branch of the federal government fulfilling its assigned role and respecting that of the others. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has now made clear that he won't respect these basic constitutional limits on his power.

Last year, for example, the administration was displeased with Congress's failure to enact the White House-supported Dream Act, which would have legalized numerous categories of young undocumented aliens. And so, in August 2011, the administration announced it would not deport illegal aliens who had only violated the immigration laws. Henceforth, only those who had committed criminal offenses, in addition to immigration ones, would be the subject of deportation proceedings.

Mr. Obama followed this with a White House announcement in June of this year that granted effective amnesty to undocumented aliens under age 30 who had come to the United States before the age of 16. This entire group will no longer be subject to deportation proceedings and may also qualify for renewable work permits. Thus the president implemented portions of legislation he could not get through Congress on his own signature and acted in ways blatantly at odds with the existing immigration laws, which provide for no such exemptions from deportation.

Earlier this year, in February, the administration gutted the strict student testing and monitoring requirements of the 2001 "No Child Left Behind" law. The law, which passed with strong bipartisan support, is meant to make schools more accountable for their pupils' progress. But the testing and monitoring requirements are loathed by teachers unions across the nation—a key Democratic constituency for November. Unable to convince Congress to revise key provisions of the law, the president simply authorized "waivers" from many of these requirements—including one that states establish reading and math proficiency standards for all students by 2014. But "No Child Left Behind" does not provide for such waivers.

Most recently, the administration announced that it will waive the central tenet of the Clinton welfare-reform law—the requirements that recipients work or prepare (through approved education or training) to do so. Although certain aspects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act are subject to waiver, the federal work requirements are not among them.

The pattern of lawlessness here would have outraged the Constitution's Framers. It should outrage all of us—including and especially members of Congress on both sides of the party divide.

Congress makes the laws and they must be enforced. For the Constitution's Framers, this principle was bedrock—not only the ultimate achievement of our own revolution, but of England's Glorious Revolution a century before. King James II was deposed in 1688, in no small part, because he claimed and exercised the power to "suspend" parliament's laws.

Congress does not have to reach back to the 17th century for a precedent. Like President Obama, President Richard M. Nixon also refused to implement federal statutes when he believed Congress was wrong. Nixon did so by refusing to spend ("impounding") money authorized and appropriated by Congress. It responded with the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in 1974, followed by a Supreme Court decision (Train v. City of New York, 1975) overturning one of the president's impoundments, effectively ending the practice.

The Constitution gives the president many tools, some legal and some political, to use in his daily cut and thrust with Congress over national policy and priorities. But it does not permit him to ignore the laws Congress has enacted, and to make his own rules simply because he thinks the desired policy result is the right thing to do. A president who does not understand this does not understand the constitutional requirement that he "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," or his inaugural oath to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States."

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the White House and U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

A version of this article appeared July 27, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama vs. Congress—and the Law.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577550832007759536.html