As we approachwith dreadyet another national election, let’s remember that, as awful as the candidates chosen to campaign for the presidency may be, the office itself is much, much worse. The people we choose to inhabit the White House are part of the problem in American presidential politics, but the unrealistically vast expectations the public places on that position, and the efforts of chief executives to expand their powers to meet those hopes and dreams, pose even greater danger.
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Δ Public Perceptions of an All-Powerful President
“American presidents are often blamedand take credit forthings outside of their control,” YouGov reports in an end-of-August poll. “While the executive role carries significant power, it is ultimately limited by the realities of governance and the scope of federal authority.”
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe that presidents have “total control” or “a lot of control” over gun deaths, abortion access, and poverty rates, pollsters found. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe the presidency exercises such vast authority over issues including foreign policy, national debt, and tax rates. Majorities of both partisan groups see the president exercising dictatorial authority over foreign policy, military operations, judicial appointments, and natural disaster response. But Republicans are more likely than Democrats to view the president as a near-monarch.
Worse, whatever powers partisans think the president has, many want the office to wield much more.
AP-NORC pollsters tried to put a positive spin on an April 2024 poll, claiming that “few adults like the idea of unilateral action by presidents,” putting the overall number at 21 percent (which is still too high). The subsequent AP news story was more honest, noting “though Americans say don’t want a president to have too much power, that view shifts if the candidate of their party wins the presidency.” Rule Me Harder
In the abstract, Americans don’t want a dictator. But if it’s their preferred leader, many are willing to throw checks and balances out the window so favored policies can be jammed through.
Specifically, the AP-NORC poll found, 57 percent of Republicans thought it would be a good thing if Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election for him “to take action on the country’s important policy issues without waiting for Congress or the courts.” Among Democrats, 39 percent thought the same of Joe Biden. The poll predated Kamala Harris replacing Biden at the top of the ticket, but it’s difficult to imagine Democrats enthused by her candidacy to be less willing to grant Harris unilateral power.
Unfortunately, this involves an ongoing and very unfortunate evolution in expectations about the presidency andespecially troublingpresidents’ attempts to meet those expectations. The country’s chief executive may be “ultimately limited by the realities of governance and the scope of federal authority,” in YouGov’s words, but neither voters nor politicians respect those limits. The Presidency Grows Out of Bounds
“President Barack Obama came into office four years ago skeptical of pushing the power of the White House to the limit, especially if it appeared to be circumventing Congress,” Anita Kumar reported for McClatchy Newspapers in 2013. “Arguably more than any other president in modern history, he’s using executive actions, primarily orders, to bypass or pressure a Congress where the opposition Republicans can block any proposal.”
The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf went further, calling Obama “an executive-power extremist.” The 44th president’s excesses, he pointed out, included ordering the killing of a U.S. citizenAnwar al-Awlakiby drone strike.
But Obama was most notable in that he’d so rapidly and completely switched positions from that of a critic of unilateral presidential authority to one of enthusiastic monarchical fandom. Other White House residents eagerly embrace the idea of issuing decrees. President Donald Trump built on Obama’s precedent, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Joe Biden embraced executive power so enthusiastically that even allies on the editorial board at The New York Times advised him to ease up.
“Over the past couple of decades, we’ve been running a dangerous experiment,” the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy writes in the foreword to the updated 2024 edition of his 2008 book, The Cult of the Presidency. “As our politics took on a quasi-religious fervor, we’ve concentrated vast new powers in the executive branch. Fundamental questions of governance that used to be left to Congress, the states, or the people are now increasingly settled winner takes all by whichever party manages to seize the presidency.”
Making the matter worse, Healy adds, “American politics has gone feral over the past 15 years, and that’s made the president’s unilateral power a direct threat to social peace.” A Recipe for Conflict
With roughly half of Republicans and Democrats reacting “with fear and anger toward the other party,” according to Pew pollsters, and large majorities “increasingly likely to dislike each other and to feel hostile” towards political opponents, per YouGov surveys, unilateral presidential actions that bypass debate run the near certainty of infuriating those who don’t support the president. That’s a recipe for resistance and escalating conflict.
“Anyone capable of thinking past a single presidential election cycle should recognize the dangers of giving presidents an even freer hand,” warns Healy. “In a country as fractious as ours has become, that’s a prescription for turning our as-yet-metaphorical civil war into real ‘American carnage.'”
But, as surveys point out, Americans think presidents have more power concentrated in their hands than they really do and want them to wield an even greater share of authority without checks from the legislative or judicial branches. The American presidency generates internal friction and division, but it does so to popular acclaimat least from those supporting whoever wins office.
The solution isn’t a super-charged chief executivenot if we want the country to survive. We should make the presidency less powerful. Move decision-making back “to Congress, the states, or the people” as Healy points out was once the norm. Political decisions should be made as close as possible to the individuals who experience the consequences, to minimize the chance that they’re imposed on the unwilling. That means learning to live with the fact that people elsewhere may choose to live differently.
But doing so requires overcoming the widespread desire for an American dictator. When it comes to presidential politics, voters are often their own worst enemies.
