A Fleeting Vision of Statehood and Sovereignty in Washington

   President Obama gave his last state of the union speech January 12  before persons exercising all federal powers. Supreme court members,  senators, congressmen, cabinet members, department heads of federal agencies sat before him. He held the supreme power over the military and diplomacy but all his other powers, like the powers of persons who sat listening to him, were limited by the Constitution or laws passed by Congress. No one present in the chamber of the House held total power. Imagine Vladimir Putin addressing a large assemblage of government officials in Russia. All the sovereign power of the Russian state is in his hands and whatever he distributes down to officials to exercise is absolute over all Russian citizens anywhere in Russia. The American president does not have the power to distribute down absolute power because various federal powers have already been established in the hands of persons he does not control directly by the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution.

   However the assemblage listening to the President appeared grand and, if understood correctly, it was grand. If somehow every hand present holding a bit of power could come together and form some absolute and coherent unity working as just one hand, we would have something like one sovereign government. It would seem as sovereign as Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia. However none of this unified power could be used absolutely to command at will every American citizen. It would be a unity creating a sovereign power with no base and therefore a useless sovereignty. However, while the President addressed his audience, an odd and fleeting unity appeared to him as a vision. For a while, for an evening, Washington seemed, with all its great powers gathered together, a sovereign state like every other state in the world. Then the meeting broke up. The vision vanished. The Washington government was again split into parts and the momentary illusion of being a state vanished also because the Constitution does not grant Washington enough powers to be a state. The fifty American states have the right under the Constitution to consider themselves sovereign states. But they were all absent and none of their governors were invited to hear a speech about the condition of their union.

Daniel McNeill