Power Line: The fruits of an unserious presidency
I am always troubled when Person A blames Person B for not fixing a problem that Person A "owned."
What do I mean? In British history, in some situations, such as treason, a father found guilty of treason could be deprived of his lands and his title and prevent his son from inheriting either from his father -- a corruption of blood. The son was disinherited by the father's criminal acts.
In modern trust law, that is the law about management of assets of a third person (a trustee contracts with a trustmaker to manage assets for a beneficiary, a third person), the default rule is that a departing trustee's misdeeds can cause the new trustee to be liable. The idea is that the new trustee has an incentive to find out about the departing trustees misdeeds. In practice, the new trustee just gets sued for something with which he had nothing to do.
In a more casual situation, it would be as if a wife were imprisoned for her husband's theft of their neighbor's house. It would be as if a Muslim woman were stoned to death by her family because her neighbor raped her. Neither woman should be punished for the male criminal's actions.
This is an apt equivalence in Clinton and the Democrats blaming Bush for failing to stop 9-11. The Clinton Administration does not cease being responsible for its misdeeds on January 20, 2001, because someone else swore an oath.
The greatest myth in Washington is that a person should be held responsible for all that happens during their watch. That works well if you are standing on a castle wall, watching your enemy's bonfires outside of archery range. It does not work in civil, legal, or bureaucratic situation.
I would have less complaint about this problem if a Constitutional Amendment were passed allowing the President-Elect to submit his Cabinet and subcabinet to the Congress-elect the day after the Electoral College meets -- or even better on January 4th. The Amendment would further give Congress 30 days to review and accept-or-reject. A failure to reject would constitute an approval. That would give the new administration the ability to take control over the bureaucracies in practice by April or May.
As it is, the Cabinet is not in place until summer and does not start exercising real control until autumn with policy consequences starting in full swing until nearly Christmas.
An administration dealing with the Crisis-du-jour has more immediate control: a Ruby Ridge or Waco is clearly within the new administration's control sooner. The control is more of a minor, unit-level logistic and wholly tactical nature.
But what of control of strategy and systemic logistics? These take time and interaction with Congress to implement. How can an administration that must submit a new strategy to Congress be responsible for an action or misfeasance unless and until the whole oversight or legislative process is attempted?
Once we see that Clinton and his supporters are merely replicating the fallacy of the stoning the rape victim, there is little to make of his teenagerish anger except a show for his peers.
