More on Gephardt

Brett responds, and so do I (in the spirit of good fun and debate). (James is in the mix as well).

I guess it depends on what one wants to argue about. If the argument is, in an attempt to salvage some sort of sense from Gephardt’s statement, that there might, theoretically, be some way a President could do something to obviate a Supreme Court decision (like Brett’s argument that “gag orders” for abortion counseling as a way of limiting the effects, to some degree of Roe v. Wade), then ok, I will concede that part of the point.

However, that really isn’t what Gephardt said. Rather, he made it sound like he would use the use a non-existent power of the Presidency to “overcome” (which sounds a lot like overturn) a SC decision. That is, as I said earlier, ludicrous on its face. Trying to limit or contain the effect of a SC decision is one thing, utterly “overcoming” it is wholly another.

And I do agree with James on the fact that a President can try to do any number of things, but trying is not always succeeding.

In this case I think that the burden in the argument is on Gephardt to explain what he thinks he is saying. I really don’t understand the point of Brett’s argument “the fact that opponents of Gephardt can't figure out how he could issue an executive order to counter Grutter if it had gone the other way means absolutely nothing.” Actually, I think it means everything--if a candidate makes a controversial, and nonsensical statement, the burden of proof of the sense of the statement is primarily on he who made the statement.

His counter thusfar is that Truman integrated the military with an executive order, while true, but, to my knowledge, that had nothing to do with a Supreme Court decision that Truman was "overcoming."

I am basically with Andrew Cline: Gephardt was pandering to the audience, and misspoke as a result.

Posted by Steven Taylor at June 25, 2024 03:33 PM | TrackBack