The Imperial Presidency

Robert Nisbet, known for being "the only conservative sociologist" wrote that "If necessity is the mother of all invention, war is the mother of all necessity." As true as it is in science it is even more true in the politics. Throughout the 20th Century, and now into the 21st Century, the presidents of the United States have utilized economic unrest and war to enhance the power of the presidency. Although this is not new (look at the massive usurpation of power by President Lincoln during the Civil War), it has been particularly pronounced and dishearteningly permanent in the 20th Century and beyond.

Before we go further, I need to make a couple of points. I am not a Conservative, in the modern sense. Neither am I a Liberal, or even a Libertarian. I don't even consider myself a "Classical Liberal." I have come to firmly reject ideological labels as belying the complexities of political questions. I believe in Responsible Liberty and Responsible Government. The People should not abuse their liberty, and the Government should not abuse its power. It is my view that the eternal struggle in politics is between these two extremities. Perhaps my political philosophy could be boiled down to two quotations:

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." --George Orwell

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net." --John Adams

And so we see how we have gotten to the point where we are today, bringing me to the topic at-hand: the rise and ill effects of the Imperial Presidency.

I cannot possibly discuss this topic without being reminded of the account of Israel demanding that the aging Old Testament prophet and judge Samuel appoint them a king to reign over them. The following is the story from Chapter 8 of the first book of Samuel:

When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."

But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

To the writer of the book of Samuel, he thought it was an atrocity for the King to require a tax of 10%. My how perspectives have changed. America has more or less followed this same path. The framers of the Constitution feared a King. Washington himself exercised self-restraint, turning down the opportunity of a third term because he did not believe America should become a monarchy. This unwritten rule of honor perpetuated throughout the course of American history. It almost ended with Woodrow Wilson, but due to a massive stroke, he was physically unable to campaign for a third term. And it is going back to Wilson that we trace the origins of the Imperial Presidency.

Wilson was the foreshadowing of FDR. A temporary glimpse into the full power a President could muster, both in terms of usurped power and in terms of influence. It should not surprise us that it was during World War I that Wilson was able to make these strides. The Great Depression and World War II brought with them (after a brief hiatus during the inter-war period) even more unprecedented usurpations of power by the federal government, concentrated in the executive branch. Thus began the great emasculation of the People's House, and Congress in general. Rather than the Executive being the moderating influence on the agenda of the Congress, the Congress has become nothing more than the President's privy council, occasionally changing hands to stop the agenda of the President.

Clearly unintended (though not unanticipated) by the Founders, who gave Congress Article 1 of the Constitution to show forth the primacy of the branch of government closest to the people, the President was supposed to be the Head of State, oversee the implementation of the laws passed by Congress, and occasionally veto harmful statutes and excessive spending bills that could result from the excessive influence of "faction" in the Congress.

Instead, what we have today is a Presidency that defines the national agenda, draws up the Budget and submits it to Congress (when clearly this was intended to be the other way around), a President who is in in many cases the only political figure the average figure can even name. The President now has the de facto authority to wage undeclared wars, and invade the privacy of the average American in the name of "national security." We seem to look to the President to "fix" the economy when times are bad, to make sure income is distributed "fairly" and to punish evil corporations who are the cause of all of our individual financial woes.

The problems inherent in the imperial presidency will not pass with the change of the individual in the White House. Nay, I fear President Obama will yield the powers of the imperial presidency in new and destructive ways. And that is the problem with the concentration of power. New people merely find new uses (and abuses) for it. Indeed, the concentration of power into the hands of a single individual gives rise to a most dangerous phenomenon: messianic candidates. It is rather easy for somebody to promise deliverance from bondage at the hands of Pharaoh. It is another thing for them to part the Red Sea and make good on the promise. I would probably put more trust in Senator Obama's capacity to part the Red Sea, though, than to unite the ever fractious American population around a decidedly socialist--and bordering on Marxist agenda.

It is clear that Senator Obama likes the imperial presidency--you don't hear him promising a reduction of Government's influence over the average person, but rather a different kind of influence. This might unify a segment of the populous, but that is a unity that is more likely to be toxic than healing. Workers' revolts in the Third World are a unity of sorts, but the unity is against a common foe, rather than in favor of a common purpose. We are treading every so dangerously close to the same kind of unity if we buy into the well-veiled class warfare rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He waxes eloquent about the greatness of America, in much the same way that Ronald Reagan did. He is appealing to the latent patriotic sentiments of the left wing of America who have spent so long being unpatriotic because they felt that patriotism was being abused to prosecute an unjust war. Now that same last refuge of the scoundrel is being utilized to prosecute an unjust war against prosperity, success, and entrepreneurship with the promise of crushing tax increases, massive government spending (and crowding-out), and more entitlement programs than you could even imagine.

That patriotism consists of the confiscation of the assets of productive Americans is merely the other side of that dubious coin whose opposite number claims that patriotism consists in the destruction of privacy rights and the torture of individuals thought to have knowledge of terrorist plots. Both are a repudiation of human dignity and equality, and both are equally repugnant to the Constitutional system America is supposedly predicated upon.

In the days when I was a Socially Conservative Republican, my liberal friends used to argue that "you can't legislate morality." Yet as I hear the arguments of Senator Obama, there is a strikingly moral tenor when he talks about his platform of Robin Hood economics. It is apparently immoral for companies to make profits. Although I would argue that true justice exists when all people have their basic needs met, I believe that it is the responsibility of every individual to make their own contribution to justice than to impose justice through the ballot box. Indeed, if all of the individuals spending their time and energy campaigning for Leftwing candidates instead spent their time starting a business and amassing a fortune that they could dole out to those who they perceived were in need, then we would have a much fairer and more just society.

But instead, these supposed proponents of social justice clamor for a messiah who will by the stroke of the pen cause everything to be better. This is not only naive, but also very dangerous. During the entirety of the Bush administration, my Republican friends chastised me for being "soft on terror" because I opposed many of the invasions of privacy rights (like the Patriot Act), the power of the President with respect to undeclared wars, etc. But as I always replied "Just remember that although you think Bush wields these powers justly, you will not think so when a Democrat occupies the White House." And that is where we are today. Faced with the prospect of an ideological idealist whose principles are more aligned with Lenin than Lincoln, all of those who wanted to be tough on Islamic terror will be regretting the unintended consequences they wrought when we are presented with the awesome might of governmental terror.

The solution to this dire problem is not to elect the right President, but to diminish the President's usurped powers. The solution is that the People's House be more representative, more assertive, and take back the right to set the nation's agenda. This is what Madsion envisioned, and it is what makes us who we are. The 20th Century legacy of the Imperial President, if not supplanted by a resurgence of democracy, will undoubtedly be succeeded by an age of decline.