WASHINGTON — For at least two decades, sitting presidents have challenged what millions of Americans learned in social studies class: that the three branches of government are coequal, and that while each branch has different powers, no branch is more powerful than any other. That is no longer the case because the White House has grown in stature so that it now towers over both Congress and the courts.
“Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote in an opinion that resounded with the Founding Fathers’ own anxieties about the limits of executive power. Even some of the president’s closest supporters have grown skittish, perhaps aware that any power he accrues he will likely leave to a Democratic successor. Writing in the conservative Washington Times, former judge and Fox News mainstay Andrew Napolitano warned of the “dangers of a Trump imperial presidency.” That one of the president’s formerly closest supporters would sound such a warning amounted to a warning of its own.
Richard Nixon is the most notorious imperialist in American history. Without any authority from Congress, he initiated the secret bombing of Cambodia. Displeased by $8.7 billion that Congress appropriated for various domestic programs, Nixon simply impounded the money so that it could not be spent. A lone legislator, Rep. Barbara Lee of California, voted against the measure. While some criticized her for an alleged lack of patriotism, her dissent has come to be seen as a prescient stand against unchecked power. In a vindication of Lee’s original vote, last year the House voted 226 to 203 to “sunset” the AUMF.
With his agenda largely stymied by Congress, Obama signed momentous — and controversial — executive orders providing a path to citizenship for some children of undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, establishing more strict gun control measures and preparing the American economy to transition to an all-renewable energy portfolio.
At the same time, Trump has made things harder for himself by utterly refusing to comply with any of the Democrats’ investigations into his administration. He has claimed that Article II of the Constitution affords him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” Such hubris has inadvertently bolstered the Democrats’ case, allowing them to argue that as much as they are worried about Trump, they are even more worried about the imperial presidency he has come to epitomize.
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