The Audacity of Hope, Part #2

I have continued to read Barack Obama’s book. In the third section that I’ve been reading, Obama moves on to discuss the balance of power within government and the United States constitution. As a first example, Obama uses the government reaction to 9/11. He talks about the overreaching power of the White House. He describes how unnaturally large this portion of government has grown by saying, “When it came to questions of national security in the post-9/11 era, for example, the White House stood fast against any suggestion that it was answerable to Congress or the courts” (77). The problem with this is that it takes away needed checks and balances in Washington. From my point of view, this is most likely a direct reason for many of the failures of the Bush administration. As a whole, the country is hurt if laws and decisions are unbalanced. Later, Obama talks about the importance of the Constitution. He refers to widespread debate about what the constitution says. He describes this by saying, “We debate whether such basic common-law rights as the right to marry or the right to maintain our bodily integrity are implicitly, if not explicitly, recognized by the Constitution, and whether these rights encompass personal decisions involving abortion, or end-of-life care, or homosexual partnership” (86). In my opinion, any law derived from Congress should be able to directly link to the Constitution. If the meaning of the Constitution is twisted to benefit a certain ideology, then the Constitution will end up having no real meaning. Because the Constitution specifically talks about a division of power, then any attempt to enlarge one group over the others would be unconstitutional.

As I read deeper into the book, I am able to pick out a fourth section to write about. Obama talks primarily about the how politics plays a role in the capital. In this instance, the topic is money. He talks a lot about how much influence a lobbyist has over Congress. In comparing lobbyists to an average voter, he says, “Their influence comes imply from having more access to those officials (in government) than the average voter, and having more staying power when it come to promoting an obscure provision in the tax code that means billions for their clients” (109). Obama follows this by talking about the need for money in politics. He says, “Still, I can’t assume that the money chase didn’t alter me in some ways” (113). A candidate needs money in order to campaign for office. This influx of wealth is a corrupting force. In my personal opinion, the need for candidates to have money is making our government in Congress a plutocracy. There needs to be stiff regulation for monetary contributions to candidates in order for Congress to be a meritocracy, where the people who should be in Congress are in Congress.