Demagoguery, Lies & Video Tape

At last Wednesday night's State of the Union address, TV cameras cut to a reaction shot showing six U.S. Supreme Court justices in the House Chamber audience, as President Barack Obama launched an unprecedented attacked on the Court.

In a remarkable personal attack on the Court in the presence of justices, Obama openly criticized the Citizen United v. FEC case, a Jan. 21st decision that struck down limits on corporate political campaign spending. The president falsely claimed that the Court reversed a "century worth" of opinion on the subject by allowing such funding. In truth, there have been very few rulings on the subject until recent years and most of those were without precedence.

First Amendment Free Speech Victory

In the Citzens United case the court held, 5-4, that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech extends to corporations and unions and had been unconstitutionally restricted by the McCain-Feingold Act. (For an excellent defense of the court's ruling by a self-described liberal who believes in unfettered free speech, click here).

Barack Obama is a highly intelligent, Harvard-educated attorney and former professor of Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. He, of all people, certainly should have read and understood the Citizens United ruling. Instead he chose to distort the ruling for his own political purposes. 
The president deliberately engaged in blatant demagoguery when he claimed that the decision "open[ed] the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."

Oath to Uphold the Laws

Surely the president knows, or should have known, that federal law prohibits such contributions, and the Court's ruling did nothing to change that law.

The law, 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, defines "foreign nationals" specifically including foreign corporations, and prohibits them from making "a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election." This law was not at issue in the case.

Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any "expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication."

Indeed, That's Not True

Small wonder that after this presidential whopper, that TV cameras caught Justice Samuel Alito wincing, shaking his head and apparently mouthing "That's not true."

Justice Alito's reaction may have departed from the traditional expressionless, neutral pose the justices take when attending State of the Union events, but no one could ever recall a president distorting and attacking the court to its face in this or any other setting.

My guess is that Obama's tradition shattering, insulting and immature act was a crude part of his sudden political strategy to become a born-again populist in the wake of the election of a Republican U.S. senator by the irate voters of the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts.

But there is another even more telling aspect to the president's deliberate lies -- his own personal hypocrisy on the issue of foreign campaign contributions.

Foreign Contributions Skeleton in Obama Closet

A year ago, on July 25, 2008, I recounted Obama's close ties with one Robert Wolf, (below) president of UBS Investment Bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Group. The giant Swiss (foreign) bank even now is still under indictment for assisting an unknown number of Americans to evade millions in U.S. taxes. 
UBS' Wolf was one of the President's leading fund raisers in the 2008 presidential race, "bundling" more then a half million dollars to Obama in possibly foreign campaign contributions. UBS was one of the top ten Obama corporate contributors.

In spite of his theatrical denunciation of ther Supreme Court last week, in 2008 Obama was more than happy to take millions from corporations, especially from Wall Street banks and the finance industry.

After saying he would accept public campaign funding, Obama later refused it and collecting about $18 million just from banks and securities firms, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ campaign-finance Web site opensecrets.org.

Obama and the Wolf

Candidate Obama certainly wasn't so dramatically against foreign corporate contributions back then. Read here how Obama went out of his way to court UBS Wolf seeking donations from this foreign bank official.

Last summer Obama played five hours of friendly golf with the same Robert Wolf, who not only has been a guest in the White House, but in February 2009, was appointed by Obama to the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Quid pro quo?

Untrue, Indeed

I know not whether Justice Alito mouthed the phrase "untrue" in response to the president's deliberate distortion of the case of Citizen United v. FEC, but "untrue" accurately describes the demagoguery that the president mouthed during his State of the Union address.

What the president did say reveals a great deal about the State of Barack Obama and his exceedingly loose allegiance to truth.

 

  
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Comments

[Joseph Dowling]

Bob Bauman,

Thank you for an excellent analysis of the recent Supreme Court case on campaign finance. The following quote, taken verbatim from the majority opinion supports your argument that foreign contributions are not covered by the ruling:

We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process. Cf. 2 U. S. C. §441e (contribution and expenditure ban applied to “foreign national[s]”). Section 441b is not limited to corporations or associations that were created in foreign countries or funded predominantly by foreign shareholders. Section 441b therefore would be overbroad even if we assumed, arguendo, that the Government has a compelling interest in limiting foreign influence over our political process. See Broadrick, 413 U. S., at 615.