Scott Bomboy:
Has President Obama exceeded his constitutional power as president? Or have the president’s actions mirrored those of other past leaders? Here’s a look at the book that started the Imperial Presidency debate, back in 1973, and some ideas from its author.
The discussion over President Obama’s use (or non-use) of executive power over everything from the Affordable Care Act to the lethal use of drones on American citizens hit a new high this week, as leading Republicans picked the concept of the “imperial presidency” as a battle cry for the 2014 mid-term elections.
As this debate unfolds, Constitution Daily went back to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.s’ influential book, The Imperial Presidency, and some of his later writings to see what he thought made an imperial president so imperial.
The late eminent historian, a Democrat, was focused on the war-making and foreign policy powers of the president, which he said became obvious back in 1798 when President John Adams dealt with the prospect of war with France with the origination of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Schlesinger warned in 1973 that the American political system was threatened by “a conception of presidential power so spacious and peremptory as to imply a radical transformation of the traditional polity.”
The 1973 book focused on the administration of President Richard Nixon and past presidents. Subsequent versions of the book dealt with newer administrations, too.
In a 1987 article for the New Republic, Schlesinger looked back at the book and summarized its key concepts.
“My argument then, as now, was that the American Constitution intends a strong presidency within an equally strong system of accountability. My title referred to what happens when the constitutional balance between presidential power and presidential accountability is upset in favor of presidential power,” he said.
Schlesinger cited Abraham Lincoln as an example of a president who wielded imperial power at times, citing a famous quote from William Seward: “We elect a king every four years and give him absolute power within certain limits, which after all he can interpret for himself.”
He believed the roots of the modern imperial power debate were in the origins of World War II.
“Since Pearl Harbor, however, Americans have lived under a conviction of international crisis, sustained, chronic, and often intense. The imperial presidency, once a transient wartime phenomenon, has become to a degree institutionalized,” he said back in 1987.
“Presidents Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan thereafter assumed that the power to send troops into combat is an inherent right of the presidency and does not require congressional authorization,” Schlesinger said.
One example he cited, which we saw in last year’s debate over military intervention in Syria, was the power of the president to send the military into harm’s way with prior congressional authorization. In 1987, the examples were interventions in Grenada and Lebanon.
What a former president did doesn’t mean that it was constitutional. Saying one or more presidents got away with it doesn’t mean the one in office should. If that is the case, then if one of more people get away with a crime, and are never caught, then everybody can do the same crime and not be charged.
The president should have to state the part of the Constitution, or other federal law, that gives them the right to use any military force, or any other questionable act. congress and the supreme court should also have to do the same when laws are created or decided on.