America’s system of checks and balances might struggle to contain a despot

The power of the Presidency has been slowly expanded over the last few centuries. Each time, when the power was expanded, it was done so under a President who seemed reasonable enough that nobody was afraid of what the change truly meant. They knew that their current President wouldn't abuse it, and they didn't think much further ahead than that. Many of these expansions of power were made for very short-term political gain that seems downright silly in retrospect.

Trump should be a lesson that reverberates throughout future history on why we should always be wary of expanding the Presidency's power. There will come along a President every once in a while who will abuse every drop of power given to him and who will basically act like he's in an episode of Game of Thrones. The government should be designed to work fairly even with such a person in power.

In 1933 few people expected that 12 years later, no one would admit to being in the 43% that voted for the Nazi party. But in their defense they had no idea what the future would hold, the economy was a disaster, the country downtrodden, and the Party kept the worst of their ideas rather quiet in the big cities. The problem here is different, but we still don't know where this will go, while we can see what was done so far we don't know if this is mild compared to the future or the worst is done.

Having said that, the time to deal with a despot of some kind is before it's too late, the problem is knowing when that is and not waiting until you can't do anything any more. Our system here was an amazing design for the 1780s but they couldn't know all the problems that would only appear 240 years later. At the start they weren't even sure it would last to the 2nd president.

Bruce Ackerman, whose work was cited in the article, gave a dead-on analysis of the current situation in 2011:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7lCgKfxmuQ

He appears to be discussing certain points in his book, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. Here are a few:

- The rise of a dual-election system for president increases the likelihood of an extremist president. Imagine a political spectrum ranging from 1 to 100. In a single election, the winning candidate appeals to the fat 50 range. In a dual-election primary system the winning candidate appeals to the fat extremes of 25 and 75.

- The decline of the press leaves an information vacuum which political media manipulators fill to the president's advantage

- The constant rat-tat-tat of the War on X (where X is drugs and terror) gives a sense of urgency that only unilateral presidential action can address.

- The rise of the military as a check (or aid) to presidential power (think Turkey).

- Cabinet-level departments are increasingly influenced or controlled by non-confirmed staffers (e.g., Elizabeth Warren), removing an important check on presidential power.

- The lack of a "Leader of the Opposition" position in the American system leaves the job of braking presidential power to a diffuse Congress.

- The rise of polls as de facto privatized elections that legitimize the administration's agenda ("polls show the majority of Americans favor the President's actions").

Ackerman also notes the key role the Obama administration played in advancing these trends. This is not a question of parties, but of institutions.

It's hard to know where to begin. It appears that the Economist believes that as long as the right person is president (and, I presume, the right people control Congress), then the Constitution works fine. That isn't a compliment. As James Madison said:

"[W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself" (Federalist 51, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=10&page... ).

The Constitution was designed with the assumption that the people in any branch of the government wouldn't necessarily be "the right people," and the other branches would need to serve as watchdogs (even though the other branches wouldn't necessarily be run by the right people either; in the worst case, ruthless politicians in Congress are expected to keep tabs on a ruthless president, and a ruthless president is expected to keep tabs on a ruthless Congress).

There are mistakes in the original Constitution (e.g., the elections of 1796 and 1800), but if today's Constitution relies on the people electing angelic politicians, then we've done something seriously wrong.

Having Congress and the president keep each other in check appears to work in practice as long as they are controlled by different parties. Of course, they are currently controlled by the same party, so there is good reason to worry. The only real solution in that case is to not give power to the president if it bothers you that the person in the Oval Office might not always be someone you like. If you don't like the fact that President Trump can order the assassination of an American citizen, the time to speak up is when President Obama first claims that authority ( http://www.salon.com/2010/02/04/assassinations/ ).

Could someone tell me more about the American Enterprise Institute? They critique "Trump's executive-orders" situation, which a lot of organizations could do but they ended up in the Economist. They basically enter the picture like "we're an authority and we're saying stuff is bad, like we have an actual code for how bad it almost is".

They're a conservative think-tank, they seem to have intelligence/military ties, seem to be pro-intervention (foreign war), were against emission trading (but pro CO2 tax) and have received large donations at one point from ExxonMobil. It's still a bit of a murky picture to me. The name sets off alarm bells for me.

On the article: I noticed the phrase "students of the constitution"; it's an odd combination that elicits (for me) student protests and conservative ideology.

I'm not surprised by the current Trump situation. I've been following the shift to authoritarianism in the US and UK for a while, and this seems like the logical next step.

I haven't considered the US as a travel destination in a while, the same goes for the UK. These countries aren't stable, they're very unfree relative to where I live (NL), and I just won't stand for the level of humiliation their checks at airports have arrived at. They also seem like dangerous places to go, as they're close to no-law zones where the TSA has free reign.

It's bad enough that our largest airport has scanners that make 3D images of your naked body, but to top it up you often get a full pat-down, especially if you wear clothes with pieces of metal in it (like of jeans).

I'd much rather go spend my time and money in countries that don't require my genitals to be patted down by strangers.

Off-topic: I'm not sure why this thread was flagged. I also think it's weird that replies were disabled for e.g. the comment by TulliusCicero, but that might just be because I don't understand the disable-reply-button system.

Might? They've been struggling since the Bush Administration ushered forth an era of warrantless wiretaps and black sites.

My biggest criticism of Obama has always been his lax attitude towards the War in Terror infrastructure: NSA mass surveillance; drone strikes against American citizens in countries we are not at war with; the unaccountable FISA court, to name a few.

Obama gave his successor a loaded gun. I was uncomfortable with Obama handling it, much less anybody else.

When more than half of one of the checks firmly backs the despot of course it'll struggle.

David Frum recently wrote a piece for the Atlantic outlining the likelihood of a "backsliding democracy" in the United States. I found it chilling:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...

We deserve Trump. We deserve every fucked up thing that happens. We deserve this because we did heed the warnings, we did not stop expansion of powers, we were complacent. It's too late to be angry now.

Congress is supposed to be a check on that power. However, because of the systematic corruption of money, Congress is full of compliant and easily bought politicians, though, thus leaving few that would actually have the willingness to fight a despot.

Ackerman's quotes throughout the article are pretty spot on:

>from an 18th-century notable to a 19th-century party magnate to a 20th-century tribune to a 21st-century demagogue

I also largely agree, we have given power to the President over the years because they at least had some reasonableness to them, at least in their context. I am squarely of the opinion that it isn't quite "both sides do it" equally, but it is true both have contributed to Trumps soon to be zero checks on power.

Why is this flagged?

The flagging feature is not a "hide" button. Try the "hide" feature to make posts disappear.

might?

Timing is suspect. We've known this for a long time.