Power corrupts. Understanding this, the framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a system of government with three co-equal branches of government intended to limit the accumulation of excessive power.
The legislative branch would make the laws, the executive branch would execute the laws and the judicial branch would interpret the law. The head of the executive branch, the president, was intended, as the title implies, to “preside,” not act as king. The legislative and judicial branches were given the tools with which to prevent the presidency from trending toward monarchy.
Over much of the last century, governmental power has been trending toward the presidency. Although he has, through a series of actions, pushed this trend of greater presidential power to unprecedented levels, this trend preceded President Donald Trump. In the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, scholars James Goldgeier and Elizabeth Saunders explain how this well-documented trend of increasing presidential power has occurred.
The central thesis of their article, titled “The Unconstrained Presidency,” is that three constraints on the president — Congress, the federal bureaucracy and international allies — have been eroding for decades. They assert that “Trump did not create the freedom of action he is now displaying. He has merely revealed just how difficult it is to prevent it.”
The authors note that Congress has gone AWOL on these matters. They attribute the decline of congressional willingness/ability to check presidential power to a combination of polarization and declining foreign policy expertise.
The two Senate committees intended to oversee foreign policy and national security are the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee. These committees have held very few hearings, resulting in less supervision of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than during the Cold War and previous eras.
With increasing partisanship, members of congress reflexively support their own party. With unified government, one party controlling both congress and the presidency, the majority defers to the president. Divided control of government results in gridlock. Neither situation encourages the president to consult congress.
Another reason for reduced congressional influence on foreign affairs is a decline of congressional expertise on foreign policy. The authors state, “Simply put, legislators used to know more about foreign policy than they do now.”
Greater knowledge on a subject leads to more serious bi-partisan foreign policies that can hold a president to account. For example in 1991, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn and Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, both serious students of foreign affairs, imposed on the defense bill measures opposed by President George H.W. Bush with the backing of 86 Senate votes. This type of bi-partisan opposition to a president is increasingly rare now.
Members of Congress now serve on more committees than previously, resulting in declining expertise on specific subjects. Increased breath is at the expense of depth and incentives to develop specialized knowledge. Add to this the disincentive to take responsibility. Sending troops abroad is controversial. It is easier and safer for politicians to criticize the legality of sending troops in harm’s way than to discuss wisdom of the action.
The second category of reasons behind increasing presidential power is dismissing and sidelining the advice of career government specialists. The National Security Act of 1947 has enabled presidents to sideline career State Department professionals in favor of more politically attuned White House National Security Agency staff. Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Carter all increased White House dominance of foreign policy, reducing the influence of career State Department professionals.
President H.W. Bush’s influential Secretary of State, James Baker, sidelined his own bureaucracy. President Clinton increased NSC staffers from 100 to 200. President Obama increased it to 400. President Trump further politicized the NSA by naming Michael Flynn, and later, John Bolton, as heads of the NSA, clearly political figures.
Within the executive branch, increasing power has been shifted toward the politicized NSA at the expense of the State Department and its career professionals. Even with these trends, the State Department managed to maintain deep reservoirs of expertise — that is, until Trump’s Secretary of State Tillerson greatly reduced career personnel of that department. Tillerson even refused to spend funds allocated to the State Department to counter Russian propaganda. Although his successor, Secretary Pompeo, promised to lift the freeze, he has yet to do so.
The cabinet department exercising greater influence on foreign policy has been the Defense Department, at the expense of the State Department. While the military can react rapidly, the great risk is that action tilted toward exercise of military power is often unwise and counterproductive toward long run policy goals.
The authors cite the third category of declining checks on presidential power as the declining influence of allies. During the earlier 1990s battle against Iraq, President H.W. Bush was wise to seek U.N. support. Since 9/11, the U.S. has been more inclined to “go it alone.” President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” during the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a transparent charade.
When President Obama sought NATO support, and failed to get congressional support during the Libya debacle, he was chastised as “leading from behind.”
The end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union seemed to signal a vastly reduced need to get the cooperation of our European allies. Trump brings this to full attention by unilaterally fleeing from the Iraq Deal and other international agreements.
With Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh, who has openly declared his opposition to constraining presidential power, we can add yet another factor potentially contributing to increasing presidential power.
The framers of the constitution assumed that Congress, jealously protecting its own power, would provide the incentive to exercise its checks and balances. Now, however, the Congress has clearly put partisan power above congressional power, obsequiously deferring to the president.
With the congress remaining AWOL, there remains one solution to prevent increasing unchecked presidential power.
That important election is on November 6, 2018.
— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.
