It’s a President, Not a Sovereign
What are we doing as a country? This election cycle has brought to the forefront two candidates that have sparked more divisiveness between and within parties than at any time in recent history – perhaps in the history of the nation.
And for what? For an office that, by constitutional provision, must duly execute the laws passed by representatives of the people. The Constitution doesn’t allow the president to make law; nor does it, in my opinion, allow the president to ignore the law.
But this is what we have allowed as a country: a president so powerful that it is routine for presidents not only to issue executive orders arguably outside the parameters of existing law; but more significantly it is all too routine for an executive to ignore the laws passed by the voice of the people.
Imagine a Chief Executive Officer of a corporation blatantly refusing to enforce company policy voted on by its shareholders. Imagine a CEO staring down the members of the board and saying, I know what you just voted on, but I refuse to execute that decision.
He or she would be fired.
(I’m not suggesting here, mind you, that we should have fired this or any previous president for ignoring congressional law when it was convenient – because it’s not just this president who is guilty of such disregard.)
We have likewise allowed attorneys general for the United States to suspend their defense of duly enacted laws out of convenience. This office – part of the executive branch – was established not to be an attorney of the United States, but to be an attorney for the United States: to defend its institution, its laws, its policies, and to enforce violations of laws against the United States. Like the president for whom this attorney works, the office of the attorney general is bound by the laws enacted by the genius of the people.
In an ideal world, this election season would be a debate about who can best execute the laws passed by representatives of the people. Who can build an administration that carries out the will of the people in the most cost-effective and profitable manner? Who can understand not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law as it applies to the common good, and develop an executive strategy based on the commander’s intent? The commander, in this case, is not the president, but again the people, whose petitions have been re-presented before the committee of the whole, the merits and wisdom of such petitions considered, and such petitions having been enacted into law backed by force or enforcement.
Yes, the president is also the Commander in Chief; it is also authorized to make treaties as well as appoint ambassadors, judges, and other officers, all with consent of the senate – but the primary presidential duty is simply to execute, or carry out (or still, as the 1792 Dictionary puts it, “to do what is planned”), the laws passed by the people in the most efficient and wise manner as possible
This is not where we are. We are at a point – after a long period of executive overreach – in which we have accepted that our president is more like a sovereign than a presider. The office of the president has authority, yes, but only the authority granted to it — not the authority assumed by it. Unlike a sovereign, who may simply withhold the royal assent to the petitions of the people, the American president is bound to execute the petitions of the people provided enough of them agree. In this execution, the president has authority over the laws; it does not have authority over the justice or wisdom of the laws themselves, nor does it have the authority to disregard the laws, nor perform deliberately the execution of those laws so poorly that they have no force.
But again, we are now debating the installment of a president, not who will most efficiently execute the Affordable Care Act or enforce the Hyde Amendment, but one rather who would repeal or replace either of those laws.
Repealing and replacing laws is not the president’s responsibility; ignoring laws is a violation of the president’s responsibility (I simply don’t care about the supposed doctrine of prosecutorial discretion – applying it simply screams to the world that the applicant is inefficient and is too incapable to carry out the will of the people as instructed — or that our laws have created more criminals than we are capable of judging).
Yes, the president has the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court, but even those justices are (or should be) bound by the Supreme Law of the Land, which supersedes even their opinions.
Put simply, we should not be debating the election of who will raise minimum wage; who will provide free college for everybody; who will repeal Obamacare; who will abolish the Department of Education. That is the arena of legislators. We should be debating who will best “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
That we have today in our electoral considerations placed more of an importance on the Constitutional mandate for the president to “recommend” measures to Congress than we do his requirement to execute those laws actually passed, says we are more desirous of a monarch than we perhaps realize.
None of the candidates today are speaking like an executive; they are speaking like sovereigns that want to make law. But unless we are willing to accept once more the capriciousness and subjective arbitrament of a despot, we should put the president back in place, and elevate the force of law once more back where it belongs in a Republic: to the voice of the people through its representatives.
