As President Obama stood in the Rose Garden flanked by President Calderone of Mexico and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, somehow the optics provided subtle evidence of a major American shortcoming. During the press event, the American president found himself responding to a question concerning the US Supreme Court's pending decision over his historic Affordable Care Act.
Embroiled in a constitutional challenge launched by political lackeys indebted to special interest, President Obama took the opportunity to remind America's "Oh Wisest Ones of Jurisprudence" that this is not an abstract argument. "People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of health care, the inaffordability of health care, their inability to get health care because of preexisting conditions".
With Mexico and Canada already providing universal healthcare to its citizenry while maintaining positive economic growth, the event made the US look small, petty and politically inept. When President Calderon had the chance to respond, he proudly stated "I would take advantage of this moment to say that after increasing the budget line for the folk insurance six-fold, and after having built more than 1,000 new clinics in the country, we're getting close to reaching universal coverage of health care -- full, free health care coverage for all people up to 18 years of age, including cancer coverage. Of the 112 million Mexicans, 106 million will have efficient, effective universal health care coverage".
"So I would say that I would hope that one of the greatest economies in the world, such as the United States, could follow our example in achieving this, because it was a great thing." Mercifully, Prime Minister Harper was a tad more gracious and diplomatically sidestepped the chance to pile on.
Obama responds: "Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step."
By publicly and preemptively laying out his view of the court's responsibility to acknowledge the authority of the legislative body,(as corrupt as it is) while acting in the best interest of the nation, the President effectively placed the Supreme Court in the position of being viewed as just another malfunctioning and woefully out of touch branch of government.
The President's strategy will have standing in the court of public opinion as this SCOTUS is the same pack of "lame assed legalists" who rendered the infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision and most recently gave law enforcement the authority to strip search citizens for minor infractions like non payment of traffic tickets or municipal fines and fees.
If this Supreme Court finds the individual mandate unconstitutional, not only will it be a glaring international embarrassment, it should be terrifying to anyone looking into the abyss of healthcare in America.
Placing the fate of millions of uninsured/underinsured Americans in the hands of essentially "political appointees" is dangerous considering the court has hardly distinguished itself from the political hacks that confirmed them. If one be bold enough to scrutinize the selection process for a Supreme Court Justices' confirmation, one might find America has legally subjugated itself to less than the finest legal minds the country has produced.