Shakedown

Last week, President Obama met with BP executives. After the meeting, he announced that they were setting aside a $2 billion dollar fund to compensate victims. The next day, Representative Joe Barton apologized to BP executives for being subjected to a Chicago-style shakedown. He was immediately pressured by Republican leaders to reverse himself. Despite the retraction and the fact that no Republican leaders agreed with him, the Democrats plan on using this as a major campaign point and tarring all conservatives with it. This column by NYT columnist Eugene Robinson is typical of what we can expect:

Just to review: A group constituting roughly two-thirds of all Republicans in the House takes the position that President Obama was wrong to demand that BP set aside money to guarantee that those whose livelihoods are being ruined by the oil spill will be compensated. In other words, it's more important to kneel at the altar of radical conservative ideology than to feel any sense of compassion for one's fellow Americans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how today's GOP rolls.

Two things should be made clear. The first is that no one is saying that BP should not pay. They are complaining about Obama's actions. The second is that the radical conservative ideology that Robinson complains about is the Constitution and the rule of law. The President cut a backroom deal - BP would put up a large fund but would be protected from future claims. Obama got a PR boost when he needed it. The fact that the President did not have the authority to do this didn't slow him down.

Normally I might complain about the precedent that this sets but Obama does this sort of stuff all the time. He used TARP money to and ignored bankruptcy laws to bail out GM and Chrysler. He has proposed using repaid TARP funds for other uses even though the law says that they will be repaid into the treasury. He set new mileage standards for cars and trucks by going through the EPA rather than waiting for Congress to amend the CAFE standards. He made the pharmaceuticals pay millions in ads supporting health care reform in exchange for not being included in the reform legislation. Two days ago a judge ruled that Obama exceeded his authority when he placed a six month freeze on deep water drilling.

Robinson sees this as a matter of helping people in need and it might be... this time. What about next time? Like most politicians, Obama has difficulty distinguishing between actions that help the country and ones that help him politically. Even his shake-down of BP helped his image.

I admit that the rule of law sometimes gets in the way of compassion. It can take years for things to work their way through the courts but there are reasons for this. The courts are supposed to act as a counter to corruption or mob rule. It is satisfying to take a suspect out and lynch him but it is not right. We are supposed to be better than that. We are supposed to be a nation of laws, not one ruled by a populist strongman.

Just to review, A group of liberals/progressives led by the President of the United States thinks that it is better to have the President force immediate action fro BP than to wait for the legal system. In other words, it is more important to kneel at the altar of progressive ideology than to follow the law and the Constitution. This, ladies and gentlemen is how today's Democrats roll.

UPDATE: After I posted it I realized that upholding the Constitution and the rule of law is no longer a priority for many progressives. Robinson's fellow NYT columnist Thomas Friedman has openly wished that our government could be like the Chinese government and just do things. Others such as auteur, Woody Allen, have openly wished that Obama would go ahead and become a dictator long enough to solve all of the world's problems.