"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time," Frank said. "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."
Don’t get me wrong, Barney Frank et al. are some of my favorite congressfolk. But such emboldened, titanium-spined Democrats were a sparse commodity when the Republicans decided to strip us of our civil liberties, send our troops into an illegal war, gut critical government agencies, yada...yada...yada...now we’re completely screwed and our economy is in shambles too.
So here they are, some of Washington DC's best, lamenting to the press that the President-Elect has not exercised his power of the coup by stepping into the executive role immediately. Granted, the current person in that office is about as useful as a warm bucket of spit, and Obama’s clearly got the stuff to be steward, but this is usually the moment when President-Elects are measuring the proverbial drapes. Instead, these Democrats are wondering why Obama has yet to fix the economy.
That’s not the standard protocol. As the AP reports:
Presidents-elect typically spend the transition period assembling their cabinets, their White House staff and preparing to take the reins of power.
"Typically" is understating things a bit. The inauguration has always preceded the presidency. This type of peaceful, constitutional transfer of power is one of our democracy’s most trumpeted virtues.
And Presidents don’t act alone. With the exception of the current one, they enjoy a bottomless well of experts, gurus and support at their disposal. And, as President, Obama will receive all the genius advice his prodigious brain can handle. Without these tools and his Executive powers, which are the output of a completed transition, Obama is pretty much just another President-Elect.
Frustration with the sitting President and the impotence of their own reflections should evoke the disdain of Obama’s former Congressional colleagues. Instead, they lash out at the President-Elect in an act reminiscent of the circularly firing McCain campaign. Perhaps they should hold their fire at least until January 21. By then, Joe Lieberman will probably have their backs.