The Cult of the Presidency

I recommend – strongly – that you get Gene Healy’s new book The Cult of the Presidency. (Due out in late April - check www.catostore.org).

Healy carefully documents that, although Bush II may be one of the worst offenders in abusing executive power, he is not the first by a long shot.

The tradition dates back at least a century to Theodore Roosevelt and includes most Democrats and Republicans since then. Healy makes a very strong argument that Americans have come to view the presidency as a sort of secular national messiahship, and that most occupants of the office from Teddy on have fanned this belief and used it as cover for increasingly-widened powers, at the expense of limited government and civil liberties.

The ultimate problem, Healy seems to be saying, is not who occupies the presidency but the very nature of the office as seen by most Americans today. Most of us want the president to solve every problem, or at least “respond” to every problem, and that requires widening the power of government in general and the president in particular. FDR openly admitted when he took office in 1933 he would be asking for domestic powers equivalent to the wartime powers of commander-in-chief.

So, if you think calculating evil is a recent development in the Oval Office, take a closer look at the last 100 years. Woodrow Wilson persecuted opponents of the Great War. FDR sent Japanese-Americans who were U.S. citizens to concentration camps, after seizing their property. LBJ gave us the Vietnam War, in which many more people died than in the Iraq War. Nixon of course gave us Watergate and assorted other Machiavellian criminality.

The precedent for presidents over the last century has been bad, unless you happen to believe a president with virtually unlimited power is a good idea. Many people do – so long as it’s “their guy” with the power.

That’s demented, in my opinion. The end result of this is always a Caesar, or worse.

We need to un-set the precedent. We should either place new, stringent restrictions on the president via constitutional amendment or adopt something like the Swiss plural presidency (they have 7) in which a committee exercises executive power. The committee members act as equal checks on each other.

The election of Obama, Clinton or McCain will do nothing to change the current situation, despite the fervent belief of their passionate supporters.

Lord Acton pointed out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The nature of the office virtually guarantees corruption. The president now has a wide array of arrogated powers and patronage, virtually-Congressional-oversight-free command of the most sophisticated and well-armed military in the world, and control of a vast intelligence network centered in the CIA and NSA.

That’s a heady, imperial mix. It defies common sense to believe that anyone – other than a few long-dead saints – could resist the temptation to use that power extensively. And indeed, hardly any president has resisted the temptation during the last century.

America’s founders designed the office of president for people like Cincinnatus, not people like Caesar. We need to revisit that sentiment and re-set the precedent because history teaches us that after Caesar comes Caligula.