Whether you are among the majority of Americans, who consider George W. Bush to be the worst President in American history, or among that dwindling number of deluded Republicans and professional conservative lickspittles who believe that history will vindicate him someday in the far, far, far off future, it is difficult to argue against the point that the Bush Administration put the limits of presidential authority to an acid test and was generally able to extend executive purview to an extent rarely seen outside of times of full-scale war. Now, one of the most significant points on which Barack Obama will find himself judged by the American public, by presidential scholars, and even by the rest of the world is the degree to which he is able and/or willing to retract that power back to within more traditionally accepted boundaries.
Lots of blogs and journos are linking to this piece on The Atlantic’s website by University of Baltimore law professor Garrett Epps that considers the deliberate vagueness of the definition of the Executive Branch in the Constitution and the shaping of the office in part by the Framers’ perceptions of George Washington, but to an even larger part by the writings of Alexander Hamilton.
While the other Constitutional Conventioneers were more focused on hashing out the nature of Congress, which they saw as the REAL source of power in the new government, Epps says the Framers were a little bit afraid of Washington’s power base due to his national popularity, and so they deliberately avoided specifying powers that the first President could use against Congress. Hamilton, meanwhile, expounded on a vision of what he called the “unitary executive”, and though his ideas did not find their way into the Constitution, they became a blueprint for engineering the use of political power during Washington’s tenure (Hamilton was his Secretary of the Treasury and a key adviser), which in turn set precedents for power grabs used by Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, and so on and so on, right up to You Know Who.
Epps contends that the Executive Branch needs to be recast, beginning with overhauling the national electoral system to eliminate the Electoral College, and including forcing the President to form a “national unity” government if his party drops below some threshold of majority in Congress. Most notably, he says that the Executive Branch should be forced to split power between the Presidnt and a nationally-elected Attorney General, who would be elected in alternating cycles, because the current Executive Branch is too large and all-encompassing to be managed by a single manager.
Personally, I think a lot of people are going to be very disappointed when it turns out that Barack Obama won’t be willing to give up all the extra powers George Bush and Dick Cheney were able to snag, and that by the time 2012 rolls around there will be a lot more public stomach for the sort of reforms Epps is talking about, so it’s a good time to come up to speed on all this.
