Quote of the Day:
If the Supreme Court has been clear about anything it has been that the failure of Congress to act doesn’t amount to license for the other branches to act.
—Editorial in the New York Sun
Okay, I don't expect blog readers to become upset en masse that Mount McKinley in Alaska had been renamed Mount Denali, the name long used by Alaskan natives. But I think I can say without making a mountain of a molehill that the way the name change was done is symptomatic of the way the Obama administration operates–through executive fiat. The Sun editors observe:
It's a mystery to us where President Obama or his interior secretary, Sally Jewell, gets the authority to rename in Alaska a mountain whose name was ratified by Congress a century ago as McKinley. We can understand the Democratic Party’s interest, in that McKinley, a Republican, was a particularly fine President. He was, moreover, one of four presidents felled by an assassin. We can understand, too, the sentiments of Alaska, whose legislature has wanted to change the name. Where, though, does the president come off doing this by fiat?
The question begs for an answer in light of the fact that legislation has been before Congress to change the name, but the Congress has decided not to do so. If the Supreme Court has been clear about anything it has been that the failure of Congress to act doesn’t amount to license for the other branches to act. Congress, the law supposes, had its own good reasons for not acting. One of them no doubt is that McKinley was from Ohio, which, given that Mount McKinley National Park is the locale of said mountain, has its own standing.
Like the editors, I have no problem with Denali, the name Alaska's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski uses for the peak. But before the Obama administration, we had three branches of government and, if the name was to be changed, it should have been done through legislation. President Obama routinely has said that if Congress doesn't act, we "can't wait" and he'll take unilateral action. Looks like President Obama couldn't wait to administer a a slap in the fact to McKinley, who is now forgotten but who deserves to be remembered. The editors write:
In any event, let us raise a salute to Wm. McKinley. From his front porch in 1896, he ran one of the most remarkable campaigns in American history, defeating the Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, who ran for the free coinage of silver — a campaign of inflation — by attacking the Jews. It was one of the few anti-Semitic campaigns in American history. McKinley defeated it handily and gained passage in 1900 of the Gold Standard Act, which set the stage for the great boom of the 20th century. It’s a monument as majestic as the peak of Denali.