The Mom Who Came to Dinner (originally aired November 29, 2005)
President Allen considers options when a Navy base in her Connecticut hometown faces closure and when an old law-school friend asks her to stop the looming execution of a mentally retarded client. She also meets a new political consultant, welcomes her mother for Thanksgiving, considers whether to run for re-election, and gives up a political weapon against Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton.
The two main plotlines in this episode actually are outside the scope of what presidents can and should be handling. Presidents do not have unlimited power and are bound by our system of federalism and by other laws. President Allen ultimately realizes that in one case but not in the other.
- Death Penalty. First, President Allen could not pardon or commute the sentence of someone who had been convicted of a state crime like murder. Presidents have the power under Article 2 of the US Constitution to "grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States," but have no such power for state crimes.
She also cannot use federal law to stop the execution. Her law-school friend is right that there is a federal statute prohibiting the execution of a mentally retarded person, but this law only pertains to death sentences imposed under federal law. It does not bar state executions of the mentally retarded and has no effect on states like Texas. (This law is 18 USC 3596(c), not "federal crime bill 18 USC 9536a," by the way)
President Allen recognizes all this during her conversation with her friend, but nevertheless goes on to issue an executive order stopping the Texas execution and commuting Linda Bowden's death sentence. It is unclear what authority this order is based on, but her action could well be unconstitutional. The Texas governor should not accept Allen's order without a fight and should bring a lawsuit challenging her action in federal court.
In real life, executions of the mentally retarded were deemed unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in June 2002 in a 6-3 decision (Atkins v. Virginia, on-line here). The majority held that a national consensus had formed that the execution of the mentally retarded was cruel and unusual, and banned such executions in every state. Only two states had banned such executions when the Supreme Court first considered the issue in 1989, and 16 more states had enacted similar bans by 2002.
Even so, the Supreme Court did acknowledge that there was still disagreement as to which offenders are in fact retarded, and left that definition to individual states. Texas could thus, for example, execute a person that it did not consider mentally retarded even if other states might.
- Base Closures. At least President Allen does realize that she should not do much to stop the closing of the base in her Connecticut hometown. In real life, she could not have the power to do much even if she wanted, if closing the base was the final recommendation of an independent base closure process like the one we have in real life.
Current procedures for making decisions about which domestic military bases should be closed and realigned were created in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a way of minimizing the role of politics in such decisions. Under the "base realignment and closure" process, or BRAC, recommendations are made by the Defense Department, individually reviewed by an independent commission, and must be accepted on an all-or-nothing basis by the president and Congress without any modifications.
In the 2005 BRAC round (information on-line here), the Defense Department made 190 recommendations for base closures and realignments. A commission accepted 119 recommendations without changes, accepted 45 with amendments, modified 13, and made five additional recommendations on its own, including one recommendation for closing a base instead of realigning it. President George W. Bush approved all the recommendations on September 15 and Congress did not vote to reject them by November 8; the recommendations thus became law on November 9. The Defense Department now can begin implementing the recommendations and must do so by 2011.
Like the fictional Essex base, a major Navy base in New London, Connecticut (on-line here) was recommended for closure in the 2005 BRAC, though the commission ultimately voted to keep it open.
Base closures allow for changes in the military infrastructure and for savings, though they do mean the loss of jobs in local communities. Such communities can gain new jobs as the military redevelops closed bases for new uses. As of October 2001, the Defense Department reported that 129,649 jobs had been lost at major BRAC locations, of which about 62 percent had been replaced. The GAO reported in April 2002 that most communities were continuing to recover over time from the initial economic impact of base closures, and that such communities compared favorably with national averages on factors such as unemployment rates and income growth rates.
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By Stephen Lee
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