In the near week since President Obama’s State of the Union speech, commentators from all sides of the political spectrum have weighed in on the good, bad and innocuous of Obama’s vision for the country’s future. What’s perhaps not been commented on enough is how unfortunate it is that Obama’s policies – or those of any President for that matter – concern us so much such that we’re compelled to watch, comment, and worry about the implications of State of the Union speeches at all.  For background, it’s fair to suggest that every reader of this column has approached Presidential elections at one time or another with a great deal of excitement, dread, or a combination of both depending on what pre-election polling data suggests. Possessed with strong views about what should be the future direction of the country, elections are important to all of us; so important that sometimes we stay up all night to catch the returns on the way to forming an optimistic or negative view of the policy landscape going forward.  At first glance this speaks to the wonders of American democracy, and our ability to participate in it. But given a second pass, the American obsession with national politics and policy speaks to a hugely negative trampling on the Constitution by both political parties.  To put it simply, national elections shouldn’t matter that much, and if the Constitution even remotely informed the policy directions of politicians, the vast majority of Americans could with good conscience ignore national elections along with much of what’s going on in Washington. That’s the case because as any cursory reading of the Constitution makes very plain, the document first authorizes the federal government, and then it severely limits its power.  The Bill of Rights is in no way meant to limit our infinite rights as American citizens, but instead it exists to explicitly constrain the activities of our elected officials in Washington. The various amendments explicitly list the powers of the federal government, and any not listed quite simply do not exist.  But just to ensure that there be no confusion as to what they meant in writing the Constitution, the Founders made sure to insert the 10th Amendment. Some call the latter “the Amendment for Dummies”, as it makes very clear that any power not enumerated to the federal government once again does not exist.  Back to national elections, they shouldn’t matter because assuming a government operating under the strict constraints laid out in the Constitution, there’s not much the federal government could do to profoundly alter our lives. Basically Washington is empowered to provide a military to defend us, a stable currency, protection of our property from unreasonable search and seizure, plus it must secure our right to live as we want so long as our actions don’t encroach on the rights of others.  So when we consider elections and major Presidential speeches, much of what our leaders promise us goes well beyond clearly set constitutional limits. President Obama spoke of our “Sputnik Moment”, and the need for government to promote growth through various assaults on taxpayer wallets, yet in his defense, he’s no different from Republican presidents promising “Ownership Societies”, targeted business/research tax breaks meant to “create jobs”, and other government-driven concepts that ultimately trample on our freedoms.  The problem for both political parties is that there’s no mention of economic growth in the Constitution; instead, it was correctly assumed that a free people would grow in all ways, including economically. Again, the federal government merely exists to secure our freedoms, after which we as individuals are supposed to find individual happiness on our own.  Of course, politicians wouldn’t be politicians if they were actually willing to abide by the document that they all swear too, so Democrats promise universal healthcare, investment in “solar shingles” and education all paid for by others, while Republicans offer “faith-based initiatives” to “strengthen” families, bailouts of failed economic concepts that are well-connected in Washington, and devalued dollars on the wholly false premise that U.S. exporters will prosper.  To pay for all of this they tax us at nosebleed rates, despite the vision at our nation’s founding that we would pay the vast majority of our taxes to our local governments; how much we pay a function of how much government we want. With the federal government’s powers very limited, there wouldn’t be a huge need for revenues.  More modernly we’ve reversed the above, so rather than choosing how we’ll be taxed based on the city/state we live in, now we pay the biggest tribute to Washington, and that reality unquestionably makes us captive to tax rates that have long been way too high no matter the party in power. That our productivity has thrown off trillions in revenues to the U.S. Treasury makes things worse, and makes potent a Washington political class that was largely meant to be impotent. Is it any wonder that Congresses and Presidents ignore the Constitution’s limits when they have so many trillions at their disposal?  To justify their constitutional eviscerations, both parties to varying degrees trot out the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause along with the Commerce Clause as their defense. The problem there is that the mention of either one is a total perversion of the Founders’ intentions with both.  The Commerce Clause was written to make sure that states within the U.S. did not protect nascent industries through tariffs. In short, the purpose of the Clause was not to regulate trade, or enforce the purchase of something the citizens otherwise wouldn’t buy; instead it was meant to make trade within the states regular. Translated, states could not put up barriers to goods coming from other states.  As for the Welfare Clause, far from some ambiguous insertion meant to allow politicians to do whatever they wanted with our general welfare in mind, the Welfare Clause was written to ensure that any actions taken by the federal government that fell within its enumerated powers had to be considered with the general welfare of the citizenry in mind. To suggest otherwise – as many do – would be to turn the Constitution itself on its head, not to mention that the document would never have been ratified.  Some politicians claim that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document” meant to be read with changing times in mind. This too is false. Far from a malleable document, the Constitution was created to establish a limiting framework on government, all the while enabling legislators to amend it through the amendment process. The latter has largely been forgotten, and now Washington, extremely bold given all the dollars at its disposal, simply does what it wants, constitutional limits be damned.  And there lies the problem today. It’s not so much that we should ignore what President Obama or congressional leaders have to say, as much as what they say and do shouldn’t concern us that much. Limited by a very clear document, their actions shouldn’t impact how we live to a very high degree.  But with the Constitution largely irrelevant in the eyes of our leaders in Washington, we’re sadly forced to care. Washington has too much power, and the result is that elections, speeches and legislation matter much more than they should. In short, the state of our union is an excessive amount of state.
The shame of State of the Union speeches and national elections is that we actually care about them.  If the Constitution actually informed the actions of either political party, voters could ignore what's happening in Washington precisely because the federal government wouldn't do very much.