We Oppose More Presidential Power
Or at least that is what this very cool new poll from the National Constitution Center says:
Two-thirds of Americans oppose altering the balance of power among the three branches of government to strengthen the presidency, even when they thought that doing so would improve the economy or national security.
…Congress should have the power to require senior presidential aides to testify before House and Senate committees …
The government’s power to take private property for redevelopment had little support in the poll, not even when owners are paid a fair price and the project creates local jobs.
Read the whole thing — it is really hopeful until you remember that this poll doesn’t quite reflect the attitudes of any branch of many city, state or even the Federal government. I had a long argument with a few local politicians recently about a question related to those polled and accused that person of no longer having the ability to think with their citizen hat on. The first rationale that these pols reached for was the politician-protective one — which is, at base, the only reason for much of the erosions of citizens rights and the accumulation of additional powers. Both parties have major issues here AND the accumulation of power may be one of the few reflexively bi-partisan efforts left.
So here’s my question — if Americans don’t like pols having more power — why are we so easily scared into letting them have it?
Tags: Politics
Because the majority of Americans have no clue.
Obama/Biden are not going to put those tools back in the box.
And DavidV, most are fine with it even knowing. Sheep must be led. The prevailing thought that causes acquiescence is the wolf in masquarade.
No one is going to put those tools back in the box. Why would they? Few of us are going to agitate for anything different.
cassandra,
This is what Madison originally expressed as the chief conundrum of a republic: the dynamic between empowering a government to DO GOOD and restricting it so that it cannot DO EVIL.
Much of the fault line in political philosophy in American derives from which side of that divide you hail.
Much of the confusion in politics derives from the fact that what you consider mostly GOOD I may consider mostly EVIL, yet we both (speaking in generalities, not about us personally) believe our values are–or should be–universal.
There have been times in our history when we successfully put tools back in the box. After the Red Scare in World War One. After the McCarthy years. After Watergate.
The greatest political irony of America is that we value (or at least say we do) cultural diversity, and we are a veritable tapestry of nuance and difference, but we have constructed a political system that always forces us to choose between only two alternatives (plus apathy).
Great writing, Steve. Your error is in the facts. Red Scare: what laws/constitutional change? Watergate:Nixon broke laws, he didn’t rewrite nor empower the office. Bush/Cheney however, redrafted executive power in an expansive way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy — without congressional approval or judicial review. They made themselves above the law. From here onward, every president is unassailable.
Joe, sorry but no bullseye for you. There were massive Federal and State laws enacted during the period 1917-19 that resembled the old Alien and Sedition Acts. Watergate led to a direct scaling back of Presidential power and an elimination of the untrammeled ability to use back-channel diplomacy to completely replace the State Dept. Nixon asserted the authority to assassinate legally elected heads of state of nations not in conflict with us; all the tools, Joe, are not necessarily laws.
Adressing the present, our executives cannot be held accountable for war crimes, you think that will change?
(i don’t aim for a bullseye, i want to define the target)
The thing about the tools going away — especially after Watergate — is that this time a whole brain trust of government technocrats (mostly under Reagan) started forming an entire extra-Constitutional (to me) framework for the President (in particular) for the President to be stronger than the Congress. They brought along those who would get into those branches (esp President and judicial) who would maintain this framework in spite of clear Constitutional intention. It seems as though we ratchet them back after excesses relative to a real problem or just plain megalomania. And neither seems to present themselves as a thing for folks to wake up to.