The “No Kings” day and its attendant protests and demonstrations have come and gone. But the powers President Trump is able to exercise which make him, in the eyes of his detractors, at least, a “king” will remain unless there are seismic shifts in the American and international political systems. In the absence of those shifts, the possibility that Trump will remain a “king” and that future presidents will follow his example will remain firmly in place.
The framers of our Constitution designed the federal government to make Congress the first branch. The Constitution said—and still says—that:
- Congress, through legislation, establishes all public policies, including those which govern taxes, spending, the design of the executive branch of government, and the powers of the President over the executive branch.
- The President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the states’ national guards when called into federal service, but the Congress determines which armed forces will be created, as well as their respective organizational sizes, designs, and budgets, and when a formal state of war exists between the United States and a foreign power;
- The Senate, through its “advise and consent powers,” may have the last say on the staffing of the executive branch.
- The President may veto bills passed by Congress, but Congress may override his veto and require him (or someday her) to enforce all legislation, whether the President likes it or not.
- The Congress may impeach and remove the President, while the President can neither impeach nor remove the Congress.
Yet while the words of the Constitution’s Article 2, creating and designing the Presidency, remain unchanged since they were first written in 1787, the President has nonetheless been allowed to acquire more power than those who wrote the Constitution may have intended. At the root of the evolution of a stronger presidency has been the growth of societal uncertainty.
As a general rule, the growth of feelings of uncertainty among the members of any society or organization prompts demands for stronger leadership and the selection of leaders who promise to take the initiative in supplying that leadership to alleviate or combat the causes of that uncertainty. In the twentieth century world wars, severe economic depressions and recessions, the development and spread of nuclear weapons, and the threats of pandemics and terrorist attacks are but some of the factors which have led the public to elect presidents promising strong leadership and the Congress to at least allow and even facilitate the assumption of presidential powers to exercise it. For example, the Constitution, as mentioned above, gave Congress the sole power to declare war, and Alexander Hamilton, the chief apostle of strong executive power at the 1787 constitutional convention, said in The Federalist papers that the President’s powers to wage war could be used only within the limits of a congressional war declaration or to combat an invasion by a foreign power. Yet the 1973 War Powers Act explicitly allows the President to send troops into battle without a prior congressional war declaration and in some instances without Congress’s prior approval or even knowledge—a practice presidents had already been exercising anyway with little congressional interference.
And additional factors, having lurked beneath the surface for years but emerging in full force in the Age of Trump, have accelerated the evolution of a stronger presidency—the growing fears of his supporters and the apparent contempt in which they are held by our political and media elites.
President Trump’s strongest supporters are among white working class men without college degrees and theologically conservative Christians, They fear their shrinkage as a percentage of America’s population and resent the contempt with which they’d believe they’re held by America’s political and media elites. For example, Obama in 2008 spoke of those who allegedly clung to their guns and their Bibles. Romney in 2012 complained of the lower 47% who allegedly demanded more government handouts while producing nothing themselves. Hillary Clinton in 2016 consigned Trump’s followers to her “basket of deplorables.” And Biden last year called Trump’s followers garbage. (It must be admitted that Biden himself has claimed that he didn’t intend to call all of Trump’s followers garbage and that he was referring only to one specific comedian and his tasteless jokes about Puerto Rico spoken at a Trump rally, but the audio of Biden’s remarks—perhaps the product of cognitive decline?—indicated that Biden at least misspoke, whatever he intended to say. The key to Trump’s political success, in 2016 and today, has been his ability to convince his natural constituency that he understands their fears and resentments and that he will fight unrelentingly to right whatever wrongs they believe they have suffered. For that reason his followers have supported him, and will continue to support him, despite—and perhaps because—of all the indictments, convictions, civil judgements, and impeachments which, Trump claims and his followers believe, are examples of the elites trying to suppress his followers by destroying Trump. And his followers will allow him to acquire whatever powers he wants to fight for them.
So what does the future hold? A consistent theme in the history of presidential power is that each time a president, through his own initiative, successfully claims more power, he thereby sets a precedent for future presidents to exploit. For example, prior to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, it was generally believed within the American political system that a President could veto bills passed by Congress only if he could plausibly argue they were unconstitutional. Jackson’s veto of bills simply because he thought they were bad public policy scandalized his contemporaries but is now a commonly followed practice. So, too, is the practice, pioneered by Theodore Roosevelt, by which Presidents present to Congress comprehensive legislative programs—TR’s “Square Deal,” Wilson’s “New Freedom,” FDR’s “New Deal,” Truman’s “Fair Deal,” JFK’s “New Frontier,” LBJ’s “Great Society,” etc. No doubt some of Trump’s practices, however much they’re deplored now, will set precedents and examples for future presidents to follow.
So what, if anything, can be done by those who desire a less “imperial” or “kingly” presidency? We’ll try to offer some suggestions next week.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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