Down the McMemory Hole

John McCain made an embarrassing mistake during the speech that I just posted about. When I read the transcript of the speech at his Web site, I noted a conspicuous omission: he did not refer to Kelo v. City of New London (2005), a rallying point for self-proclaimed strict constructionists. In a surprisingly pro-corporate decision, the liberal justices, as well as Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the state of Connecticut could use eminent domain to seize private property and sell it to a developer who would pay more in taxes than the original owner.

It turns out, however, that McCain did mention the case, but displayed an unfortunate misunderstanding of the Fifth Amendment, which led his campaign to edit the comment from the video on his Web site and scrub it from the transcript. He claimed that "Not only just compensation" is required during the exercise of eminent domain, "but also, private property may not be taken for public use."

One wonders what McCain's version of eminent domain actually entails. Eminent domain is the purchase of private property for public use, with or without the consent of the owner but always with due compensation. Since the Supreme Court has always been a strong defender of property rights, the definition of acceptable public use was narrow until the Kelo decision. I have no idea how McCain and his speechwriters thought eminent domain worked. I imagine that this was something of a Freudian slip, in which he imposed his own views on the text of the Constitution. If this is so (and I certainly could be wrong), it only serves to heap more suspicion on his
loud complaints about original intent. I certainly hope the next president knows more about the Constitution than this man.