During his final term as president, as the Watergate scandal raged, Richard Nixon reportedly told several U.S. lawmakers that he could pick up the phone, give an order, and shortly thereafter have millions of people killed. That wasn’t an exaggeration. There are very few people in human history who have ever wielded such power, and most of them have been American presidents.
But how can a single person with that kind of authority exist in a system of government endowed with three co-equal branches specifically designed to prevent concentration of executive power, a system in which, according to the Constitution, initiating war is not even within the jurisdiction of the executive branch?
The question of what in our system could have prevented Nixon from causing a nuclear holocaust if he had wanted to remains unanswered. There were rumors that Cabinet secretaries at the time told their staff to ignore such an order from the president if it were issued, but that is only a stopgap measure, not a constitutional check. The creators of our republican system never intended their head of state to have such power. The fact that presidents have this power today is the cause of many of our national problems.
A historic moment
Americans are experiencing a historic moment that would be fascinating to watch if it weren’t so incredibly important. A catastrophe is looming, which is becoming clearer day by day. The reason for this is that the office of President of the United States has far too much power and very few restrictions. This combination invites authoritarianism. For this to manifest itself, all it takes is someone in the White House who wants such an outcome. It seems like we currently have someone doing this.
While it is tempting and normal to view current circumstances as the result of recent events, the political situation in the United States in the 21st century is the result of decades of trends associated with the ever-increasing power of the presidency. None of this is hidden, and scholars have been writing about it for decades (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s famous book “The Imperial Presidency” was published in 1973).
And although the accumulation of presidential powers is often disguised with rationales and justifications, from anti-communism to anti-narcotics to war powers, counterterrorism, etc., sometimes it is simply the way things have evolved and changed (the nature and challenges associated with nuclear weapons are an example of this). But there is currently no denying that we have created a systemic monster that the framers of the Constitution would not recognize—and that they would fear.
The Founding Fathers believed in power sharing and control. They believed in a strong and active legislature to counter autocratic expansion of power. We currently have none of that. Is any of this recoverable? Is the erosion of the Constitution a one-way street or can it be reversed through some kind of renaissance? Do we have to go the way of the Roman Republic?
The paradoxical longing for strong leadership
To bring our constitutional portfolio back into balance, we must first want a less powerful executive branch. This is a bit counterintuitive. Americans are accustomed to electing leaders who promise to achieve results, promote positive change, solve problems and help people. Voters expect the president to use the power of his office to achieve what the people want. The pressure from the winning candidate’s supporters is not to limit power, but to use it as much as possible.
We are addicted to the exercise of presidential authority as long as it is used for the purposes we desire. The impact this has on the system as a whole receives little attention. Is it even conceivable that we could push for world leaders to limit or take back their power to prevent us from having a president with too much authority? What if this is the only way to make things right?
Reforms – and their dismantling
If we emerge from this current turning point constitutionally unscathed—and that is by no means guaranteed—we should use every momentum for reform, just as lawmakers used the aftermath of the Watergate scandal to rein in the sprawling powers of the presidency.
By the mid-1970s there were numerous hearings, investigations, and legislative changes to “correct” things, along with penalties for those in government who knowingly went too far. This seems healthy for any system when its constitutional flaws are exposed. But like a noxious weed, the growth of executive power returned with a vengeance beginning in the 1980s. Many of the post-Watergate reforms were challenged, repealed, or virtually undermined. The reason given was that the “legitimate” powers of the presidency had been curtailed.
The once-fringe concept of Unitary Executive Theory was used to justify unilateral actions and the consolidation of presidential power, pushed by think tanks (and their favored Supreme Court justices) and by establishments that wanted less interference from other branches of government. This is the same reasoning that Donald Trump and his surrogates keep citing.
Political blockades
Any attempt to roll back presidential powers will face strong resistance in our current political climate. The Supreme Court appears determined to give even more power to the president, who has far more power today than the “imperial” Nixon did in the early 1970s. The electorate has shown that it is willing to support leaders who push the limits of the constitution if they do so for reasons that please voters.
And neither party wants to unilaterally give up power unless it can trust the other side to do the same. A rescue by the legislature seems hopeless. This dynamic has developed over decades; Congress has become weak, corrupt, and co-opted, and appears happy to relinquish its power to avoid any responsibility for anything that might affect its members’ re-election. Frustration with Congress creates an even greater temptation to use presidents to achieve policy goals—often through executive orders—that lawmakers seem unable or unwilling to pursue. This dynamic is not favorable.
The real danger
But we have been reminded once again why all of these good reasons for expanding the power of one person at the expense of the rest of government are not good enough. The executive branch is the one that is overwhelmingly likely to lead us into dictatorship, and we can now see how much that office’s enormous powers have been kept in check by mere protocols.
An Unchained President Shows Us the Power of Modern Office Without Obfuscation. And that should put us all back in the mindset of Ben Franklin when he said that we “have a republic if we can keep it.” Congress, with its many members, is probably not the force that takes away our democracy. The danger comes from the executive branch, where one person is in charge.
And as with the fall of Nixon, we are reminded that increasingly powerful presidents are something the system seems to produce naturally. We must regularly restrict the powers of the executive branch when the opportunity arises. That time must come soon. The weeds have overgrown the garden.
The real purpose of the Constitution
Too many forget that the primary goal of the U.S. Constitution was not efficient government. It was the prevention of tyranny. We face all possible obstacles to change, reform and improvement to achieve this one simple goal. Whether this firewall still works is the most important political question of our time.
Will this era just be a brief episode in the timeline? A warning that encourages reflection, reform and recalibration, similar to the McCarthy era with its “Red Scare”? Or will it be a moment when Caesar crosses the Rubicon and ends the American experiment forever?
The temptation of the strong man
The most frightening aspect of this is the level of public support for an all-powerful leader who represents their views and advocates for their desires. Often these desires are unattainable because our constitutional protections get in the way. This is a problem that will endure beyond the term of the current president and requires deep national self-reflection.
We might start by remembering what happens when representative systems go awry. Those who experienced this do not like to remember the consequences. It is better to learn this lesson from another country’s tragedy than to experience firsthand the danger of historical “hot ovens.”
The last question
We are currently seeing what can happen when the only branch controlled by a single person decides to exercise its enormous and formidable powers. This shows all reasonable people that this is too much power for one person. Imagining such power in the hands of the worst enemy should be enough to make this concern clear to anyone.
The president can pick up the phone and order the deaths of billions of people and the destruction of our planet’s ecosystem. That’s clearly too much power for one person, right?
