A History Lesson From President Truman

I’ve been doing some digging and reading and ran across interesting data that I hadn’t known and data that I did at one time know but have since forgotten. I find it “Rather” curious that Obama invokes the names of FDR, Kennedy and Reagan on a frequent basis but I haven’t heard him mention President Truman at all. Perhaps he did and I missed it.

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If, as Obama claims, he is a student of history why has he not mentioned Truman’s attempt at doing the exact same thing Obama is doing now even though Truman’s efforts were declared unconstitutional and threats of impeachment made him back down? Interesting, isn’t it? I have heard how great Truman was as a President even though his approval ratings upon exiting stage left were lower than George W. Bush’s approval ratings when he left office, I find that “Rather” quizzical as well. Did you know that in the 1950s there were two “agencies” called the Office of Price Stabilization and the Wage Stabilization Board? Both were federally mandated and they backfired on the economy as well. However, that didn’t stop Truman from taking over the steel mills whose workers were threatening to go on strike. Other avenues were available to the then President but, there was a war on called the Korean War and Truman claimed imaginary powers unto the office of the Presidency and moved to seize the steel mills. Sound familiar? It’s called degeneration into Despotism. That’s what was charged against Truman and in a “decision” of a federal judge back then, Judge David A Pine stated after Truman claimed “inherent” power of the Presidency: The non-existence of this “inherent” power in the President has been recognized by eminent writers, and I cite in this connection the unequivocal language of the late Chief Justice William Howards Taft in his treatise entitled Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (1916) wherein he says: “The true view of the Executive function is, as I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the Federal Constitution or in an Act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest, and there is nothing in the Neagle case and its definition of a law of the United States, or in other precedents, warranting such an inference. The grants of Executive power are necessarily in general terms in order not to embarrass the Executive within the field of action plainly marked for him, but his jurisdiction must be justified and vindicated by affirmative constitutional or statutory provision, or is does not exist.” (US House, The Steel Seizure Case, 428) In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the actions of the current administration taking over the financial industry and the auto industry is entirely unconstitutional and are impeachable offenses no matter how honorable they may seem to be. Truman tried it and failed and was “disappointed” that he was denied his day of glory.