Question

Consider the presidency of Barack Obama. In a minimum of two well written-paragraphs, discuss one role or power which you think the President has used well, and another role or power of the presidency, which you think has not been used as well as it could or should be.

Answer 1

Tricky. I hope you know how your teacher voted in 2008, and is planning to vote in two weeks. Here's what I hope will be relatively uncontroversial possibilities:

(1) The President is Commander in Chief of the US military, under Article II of the Constitution, which gives him broad powers to employ the military in defense of the United States, and to further its interests internationally. (An interesting fact here is that when operating as Commander in Chief, the President actually is "above the law" in the sense that he cannot be constrained by any ordinary law passed by Congress. That's because of the Supremacy Clause, which says the Constitution itself is supreme to any act of Congress. Hence when the President is acting directly from the Constitution, he is not answerable to Congress.)

President Obama used his powers as Commander in Chief to direct the military to hunt down and attempt to capture Osama bin Laden, the former head of al-Qaeda, who planned and led the execution of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City that killed approximately 3,000 American citizens. A team of Navy seals attempted to capture bin Laden at his secret hideout in Pakistan, but bin Laden was killed in the attempt. Few would disagree that in this case the President used his Article II powers to strongly deter future acts of terrorism.

(2) The President also has the power and duty to enforce the laws of the United States. One set of laws relate to the purchase of guns from gun dealers licensed by the Federal government. In "Operation Fast And Furious" agents of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which has law enforcement powers with respect to guns, were told to ignore these laws -- not enforce them -- so that so-called "straw" buyers of guns from Mexico could illegally buy powerful guns and smuggle them into Mexico for the use of drug gangs.

A "straw" purchaser is someone who buys a gun for the purpose of giving it to someone who can't buy one legally, such as someone under 18, a convicted felon stripped of his Second Amendment rights to own a gun, or someone who intends to export it illegally. Making a straw purchase is a federal crime. For a licensed gun dealer to allow a purchase he knows, or suspects to be a straw purchase is also illegal. In this case, federal ATF agents told gun dealer who had good reason to know a purchase was a straw purchase to nevertheless allow it. The stated purpose of the program was to attempt to track these illegal guns, and find out where they were going, in order to identify the Mexican criminal masterminds. (I'm not entirely sure what they planned to do then, since the US has no police powers in Mexico, and the Mexican government has so far proved unable to do much about Mexican drug gangs along the border.)

However, the ATF agents in fact lost track of most of the weapons, and many were used in crimes of violence, resulting in the death of at least hundreds of Mexican citizens and at least one US border agent, named Brian Terry, who was shot and killed with a weapon transported into Mexico through "Operation Fast And Furious." Not surprisingly, the family of Agent Terry is outraged that he was killed by a weapon supplied to Mexican drug gangs essentially with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Federal government. Most people think this was a very misguided program, and a really brainless use of the President's powers to execute (or in this case not execute) the laws of the United States.

The Obama Administration's defense has been that the President himself did not know about this program, that it was all the work of lower-level officials, but, first, there is a certain amount of skepticism about that, and, second, whether or not he knew about it, it is at some point the President's job to know about and control all the activities of the Executive Branch. He is ultimately responsible for all of it. So this is probably an area where most people agree President Obama has messed up.