But, experts say, Obama’s actions are more noticeable because as a candidate he was critical of Bush’s use of power. In particular, he singled out his predecessor’s use of signing statements, documents issued when a president signs a bill that clarifies his understanding of the law.
“These last few years we’ve seen an unacceptable abuse of power at home,” Obama said in an October 2007 speech.. “We’ve paid a heavy price for having a president whose priority is expanding his own power.”
Yet Obama’s use of power echoes that of his predecessors. For example, he signed 145 executive orders in his first term, putting him on track to issue as many as the 291 that Bush did in two terms.
John Yoo, who wrote the legal opinions that supported an expansion of presidential power after the 2001 terrorist attacks, including harsh interrogation methods that some called torture, said he thought that executive orders were sometimes appropriate – when conducting internal management and implementing power given to the president by Congress or the Constitution – but he thinks that Obama has gone too far.
“I think President Obama has been as equally aggressive as President Bush, and in fact he has sometimes used the very same language to suggest that he would not obey congressional laws that intrude on his commander-in-chief power,” said Yoo, who’s now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “This is utterly hypocritical, both when compared to his campaign stances and the position of his supporters in Congress, who have suddenly discovered the virtues of silence.”