The Patriot Post® · Not in POTUS's Job Description

Barack Obama has made no secret of his disgust at Congress’s failure to pass his policies. He ran as the Hope ‘n’ Change president. Now, sitting in the White House, he is faced with partisan gridlock in Congress. So he vows he will act alone.

In a June 30 meeting with his Cabinet, Obama asked them “to be creative,” thinking up ways he could act without the rest of the branches of government. Read: find loopholes in the Constitution.

“You’ve already seen the power of some of our executive actions making a real difference for ordinary families,” Obama said at the meeting, according to The Hill. “We’re going to have to be creative about how we can make real progress.”

This kind of Rambo-talk comes at a time when Obama says he will act alone on immigration. Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest told MSNBC, “The president has tasked his Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson with reviewing what options are available to the president, what is at his disposal using his executive authority to try to address some of the problems that have been created by our broken immigration system.”

Obama’s recent actions and threats of actions show he has confused his duties as president of the United States.

Let’s start with the basics of the presidential duties – the Constitution. Article 2 says, “The executive Power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” The Constitution goes on to enumerate the president’s power: Among his duties, he will be commander in chief, have the power to grant pardons, enter into treaties (with the backing of the Senate), appoint ambassadors, give the State of the Union speech, and – probably most importantly – “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

Done well, the office of president can protect Liberty and enforce order. Federalist No. 70 says, “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

But Obama doesn’t see his position as a place to uphold those values. Instead, he picks and chooses what immigration laws the United States will enforce. His cronies at the Environmental Protection Agency angle to hamstring the coal industry with regulations to impose so-called cap and trade. Even when he gets his ObamaCare legislation through Congress, he breaks that law when his administration illegally shifted $454 million from one portion of the law to another, or when he issued dozens of delays for various provisions for political gain. And let’s not get started on the IRS, Benghazi, Veterans Affairs, Fast and Furious and the monitoring of reporters’ phones.

He is a president corrupted by his own power and ambition. He wants to leave behind a legacy instead of humbly leading the country in international diplomacy and providing stability through the enforcement of laws.

Even Hillary Clinton agrees with that assessment. According to journalist Edward Klein, Clinton blasted Obama during a private moment with friends. “The thing with Obama is that he can’t be bothered, and there is no hand on the tiller half the time,” Clinton said. “That’s the story of the Obama presidency. No hand on the f—ing tiller.” She continued, “Obama has turned into a joke. The IRS targeting the Tea Party, the Justice Department’s seizure of AP phone records and [Fox reporter] James Rosen’s emails – all these scandals. Obama’s allowed his hatred for his enemies to screw him the way Nixon did.” She finished by saying Obama was “incompetent and feckless.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner threatened to sue Obama for his failure to enforce the laws and his efforts “to erode the power of the Legislative Branch.” But it’s a weak move, which will result in little. There is another strategy, more constitutional than Boehner’s.

In the history of the United States, the impeachment clause has rarely been used. It has often been seen as a political nuclear option to intimidate a president the majority of Congress opposes.

A move to impeach Obama will be politically bloody, and will most likely stall from the Democrats in Congress rising up to protect him. But if Congress moved in 1974 to impeach Nixon over the Watergate bugs, it has more than enough reason to move against Obama for his abusive, misdirected power.