November 21, 2009
UTNE READER

Supreme Warlord of the Earth

(Page 8 of 8)

September-October 2008
by Gene Healy, from Reason  
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Law professors Jack Balkin of Yale and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas at Austin are both Democrats and civil libertarians, so they take no pleasure in their prediction that “the next Democratic president will likely retain significant aspects of what the Bush administration has done.” Indeed, they write in a 2006 Fordham Law Review article, future Democratic presidents “may find that they enjoy the discretion and lack of accountability created by Bush’s unilateral gambits.”

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Throughout the 20th century, more and more Americans looked to the central government to deal with highly visible public problems, from labor disputes to crime waves to natural disasters. And as responsibility flowed to the center, power accrued with it. If that trend continues, responses to matters of great public concern will be increasingly federal, increasingly executive, and increasingly military.

In the years to come, many Americans will find that the results of executive action are not to their liking. And if history is any guide, they’ll respond by vilifying the officeholder and looking for another knight on horseback to set things right again.

 

Gene Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute, is the author of The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power(Cato, 2008), from which this essay was adapted. His website is www.genehealy.com. Reprinted from Reason(June 2008), a libertarian journal. Visit it online at www.reason.com.

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  • Gary Mead 10/12/2008 9:41:21 AM

    It has been said that we get the kind of leaders we deserve. As Gene Healy points out, we have been demanding that the president do more and more, so we effectively have an elected king. How long is it before we make it an official monarchy? Not long if we continue on this path.

    Hero worship seems to be inherent in human societies. Examples include Caesar, Jesus, Muhammed, Washington, Lenin, Mao, Reagan, and now Obama. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were correct, we need to restrain this impulse, and stop demanding an imperial presidency. All people make mistakes, and people with nearly unlimited power make mistakes that hurt multitudes of people.

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