Via the NYT: White House Blocks Testimony on Party Crashers.
Two quick thoughts come to mind upon reading this headline and story this morning:
1) It doesn’t matter what party is in the White House, they are going to balk at allowing staff to testify to the Congress.
2) Why in the world would Congress need/want testimony about the White House gate crashers?
(The answer to the second question would appear to be “to embarrass the White House" as the request came from Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York).
Update: Sandy Levinson weighs in:
My own view is that the White House is making a big mistake for no defensible reason. The reason for my title [Original intent and the White House Social Secretary] is that it is literally inconceivable that anyone drafting the Constitution would have imagined the position of White House Social Secretary, paid for with taxpayer funds, and that the majesty of separation of powers rhetoric would apply to a situation like this.
Indeed—although from a power politics point of view, any given administration is going to be unwilling to give an inch on the issue of allowing staff to testify, regardless of their job. Beyond that, Levinson rightly notes:
This is simply yet more evidence that all presidents, regardless of political party and ostensible commitment to "transparency," take on royalist airs when taking their oath of office.
December 3rd, 2024 at 2:29 pm
I automatically dispense with any argument that is built on the premise that the founders could not have imagined…
I mean, I know they were the most brilliant and far-seeing humans of all time, but it seems that they failed to foresee many things. Some of the things they did not foresee might be even more important than the White House Social Secretary (like that 200+ years later we’d still be arguing about what they might or might not have foreseen).
December 3rd, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Fair enough.
December 3rd, 2024 at 5:31 pm
Don’t they want testimony so they can figure out how the couple got in? If they did it, so can someone else. What if the next gatecrasher is not there to score Facebook photo ops but to dust the crowd with anthrax? This is a really serious security breach. The president, vice president, and everyone at such events needs to be better protected.
December 5th, 2024 at 8:05 am
I agree. This is sheer failure of security systems. If security of president can be breached, I don’t even want to imagine what can be done to people like all of us.