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A Better Tyrant?
 How
did the U.S. economy perform under
George Washington? And how did he bring regional stability to troubled areas
of the world?
 Give up? Let’s start by
observing that people didn’t talk or think in such terms in those days.
The
president wasn’t a “leader” (a dictator or demagogue) or
a popularly elected super-representative. He was an
“executive,” inferior to Congress, with only a few limited and
specific powers. He wasn’t responsible for running an empire or
supervising the commerce of the United States.
Neither
was the Congress, for that matter. Only the House of Representatives was
popularly elected; the Senate was chosen by the state legislatures —
until, less than a century ago, it was virtually abolished by the Seventeenth
Amendment, so that its existence no longer makes much sense. What is the
point of having two legislative houses that are both popularly elected?
If the
Framers came back today, they would probably be most astounded (and
horrified) by the size of the Executive Branch, which remained so modest for
the first few generations that even in Lincoln’s time you could walk
into the White House and ask Lincoln himself for a job. With little security
and no metal detectors, assassinating a president was so easy that we may
marvel that it had never happened before 1865, except that the office was
so weak it was hardly worth the trouble. That changed with the Civil War,
when Lincoln began the usurpations of power we now take for granted.
Vulgar
people generally prefer monarchical or dictatorial forms of government, a
single dynamic or heroic “leader” — a Hitler, a Castro, a
Roosevelt. Wartime is especially favorable to strongmen, and President Bush
has used the “war on terror” to aggrandize the already-
enormous Executive Branch and its bureaucracies.
Congress now accepts all but the most extravagant claims of
presidential power, and Bush neither knows nor cares about the original
constitutional distribution of power. It is safe to assume he is quite
unacquainted with The Federalist Papers, the issues they
discuss, and the debates that gave rise to them.
![[Breaker quote for A Better Tyrant?: Is Bush the problem?]](2007breakers/070201.gif) The
same is true of most Americans;
we are still in the era of dictatorship. This is evident in our obsession with
the presidency, our premature interest in the 2008 presidential election, and
of course the frequent calls for the abolition of the Electoral College, which
has become as much a relic of an earlier age as the Senate. The whole drift
of our politics is toward direct popular election of a single
“leader.” The Constitution’s careful decentralization of
power is widely regarded as reactionary and inefficient.
Our
obsession with the presidency as the focus of political interest, and of our
irrational expectations of government, leads naturally to bitter politics and
personal hatred of a “decider” who tries — and inevitably
fails — to please everyone. Bush is even held responsible for such
natural disasters as hurricanes, though the Constitution says nothing about
weather. It isn’t surprising that he winds up being the butt of sour
humor.
So
much fuss over one man! Who says we don’t have royalty any more?
What king was ever as powerful as a modern U.S. president?
The
Framers assumed that the office would always be filled by white men, though
there is no reason its duties can’t be performed by a black or a
woman. True, it may seem odd to hear “Hail to the Chief” played
for President Hillary Clinton, but maybe that’s one of the things we
will just have to adjust to.
We
may laugh when Bush mispronounces nuclear, but we aren’t shocked
by his profound ignorance of our constitutional tradition, which should be the
real scandal. He seems to think he is commander in chief of the entire United
States, rather than of the armed forces in time of war; worse, he seems to
think he has the constitutional authority to suspend the Constitution itself.
What
does he think was the point of creating a republic, if not to get rid of
monarchy? The whole idea was to prevent one man (or a few men) from
acquiring too much power.
Well, if
Bush’s legacy turns out to be the discrediting of government, maybe
it will all have been worth it. But I wouldn’t bet on that happening. As
2008 approaches, most Americans seem to think the only thing wrong with
the presidency is that its vast powers are being wielded by a fool. All we need
is a better tyrant next time.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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