Unlike Obama's executive actions, the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal was done right

Obama went on to argue that there were other issues “where a judicious use of executive power can move the argument forward or solve problems.”

His example? Gun control. The result? Backlash.

Obama has not learned the lesson of that failure, and has tried to push through as many policies as possible though executive orders (or “memoranda“): unilateral changes to Obamacare, amnesty for illegal aliens, changes in policy toward Cuba, and more.

In each case, Obama has chosen policies that large majorities of the public say that they favor–health coverage for uninsured Americans, a “path to citizenship” for illegal aliens already here, expanding links with Cuba–and acted without Congress, in the belief that voters will forgive procedural sins . Yet in each case he has “set back the cause,” not only by costing his party historic defeats in Congress, but by enacting doomed-to-fail policies that would likely have been improved in bipartisan deliberation.