×
THE RELEVANCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: Over at The Plank Jason Zengerle acknowledges that the question of Barack Obama's experience is a canard but goes on to criticize Obama's mention of his experience teaching constitutional law in describing his career in public service. Zengerle says,
I don't think it quite qualifies as public service ... It reminds me a bit of when I applied for journalism jobs after college and my resume was so thin that I felt compelled to include my stint as a pizza deliverer.No offense to the pizza deliverers out there but I hardly think that's the same as teaching constitutional law -- at the University Chicago no less. One could reasonably argue about whether professors are public servants or not. (Strictly speaking only elected officials are public servants, but Zengerle takes no exception to Obama's listing his community organizing experience as public service, and aren't educating and mobilizing the public just two sides of the same coin?) But I don't think there's any reason to doubt the relevance and applicability of expertise in constitutional law to the presidency. Many people might say the current president suffers from a lack of appreciation for the Constitution, and that replacing him with a Con Law expert would be a tremendous boon for civil liberties and American democracy.--Ben Adler
