1/19/09

King Obama? Repeal of the 22nd Amendment?



House Resolution 5 proposes repealing the 22nd Amendment, that part of the Constitution that limits a president's reign to two four-year terms. The 22nd Amendment was ratified after FDR stayed in office waaaaay too long.

Christopher Ketcham points out that the inauguration ceremonies already wreak of monarchy:
The American presidency in its outward show and innermost tendency has since World War II increasingly shown all the markings of monarchy. The president is hovered over and catered to by hundreds of aids and sycophants, his every whim answered at notice. He enjoys a private army in the guise of the paramilitaries in the intelligence agencies. He lives in a “White House” that is itself a court contained in a bubble where the troubles of the average man cannot penetrate. He certainly does not walk often among the people, but when he does, he allows the people to touch him as they would a king, the black-suited guard walling him off, his contempt expressed in direct proportion to the ceremony, noise, trumpets, curtains, light, music, and entertainments meant to ensure that we understand this is no mere man but an ur-expression of power itself.

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