BostonHerald.com

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A president, not a king

By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Sunday, February 7, 2010 - Added 1d 7h ago

President Obama’s frequent assertions, both in his campaign and in office, that he is or wants to be a “post-partisan” figure, or to get beyond “stale partisanship,” have always seemed both disingenuous and troubling.

Now we’ve got a little academic backup for our discomfort level with such rhetoric.

Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard and a stalwart conservative, presents his analysis in the Feb. 8 issue of The Weekly Standard. One of Mansfield’s conclusions: “Obama is not our king. But he uses the monarchical branch of our government without embarrassment to project the nonpartisan image of a monarch.

“What every progressive (a classification Mansfield applies to Obama) wants is to put the particular issue he espouses beyond political dispute,” Mansfield observed after calling attention to Obama’s remark to Congress in September, “I am determined to be the last president to tackle health care.”

For Mansfield, the issue is, “Should the government take over health care,” which does not require government administration.

“Obama has attempted to blur it,” and more generally, “He understands that his principle prospers best when it is not enunciated,” the professor contends.

“Next to liberty of the mind, there is no more important liberty than political liberty,” Mansfield concludes. “This means that no partisan victory is permanent and that we shall always return to different versions of the same questions.”

More . . .

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A conservative Prof at Harvard joins in voicing concerns that the President is acting like a monarch instead of the post-partisan he promised to be.

Now, I wish some of the liberal profs there would also see this.

-- Edited by Sanders on Monday 8th of February 2010 01:33:26 AM