The Powers of the Presidency

[kentuck]

Never in their wildest dreams would our Founders have imagined the powers we have bestowed upon the office of the President. They debated whether or not there should even be a President ? The argument that in times of war we need one Commander-in-Chief helped to persuade the doubters.

They never envisioned that the people would permit a President to claim the powers we are witnessing today. Never would we return to the powers of a king or autocrat. But that seems to be where we are today.

The Founders never envisioned that treason could happen at the top. They only thought of common citizens or someone in the military. They thought our Republic would be so highly regarded that no one that the people would choose to lead them would ever betray our country or our Constitution.

But that is where we are today.

[unblock]

1. they were very well aware that tyrants aspire to power

and they carefully divided power in the constitution on order to make a true tyrant unlikely.

they did not anticipate a political party as shadow power base, one that would coordinate across the separated branches of government.

they gave congress the power of impeachment as a check against a lawless president; they did not anticipate that a majority party would be so corrupt as to debase their institution by quietly ignoring treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors by the president simply because he is of the same political party.

still, at the end of the day, the founders knew the government would only ever be as good as the people in it.

[kentuck]

3. True

"...the government would only ever be as good as the people in it"

[triron]

4. But I would agree that the President has been given too much power.

[unblock]

8. both parties have strayed from the founders' vision in this regard.

we have a standing army, for instance, which the founders did not at all want.

the whole concept of classified information, while well-intentioned, and important in narrow cases, allows for some dangerous powers, especially when there's a standing army and always a military need somewhere. it's soooo easy to overuse the power to control information.

[kairos12]

7. Well said, and unfortunately, it is where we stand today.

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

I'd say the Founding Fathers never imagined the internet and various other advances in technology. But they did have a good grasp of human nature, and the potential for an abusive president. That is, in fact, the very reason they included the process of impeachment in the Constitution.

[ck4829]

5. And I guess the most ironic thing is these aren't "powers" at all

A lot of de facto power that comes from the office of the POTUS is there simply because we agree that it has that power. We can and really should withdraw our consent from a lot of this power we say this office has.

[inwiththenew]

6. "A republic, if you can keep it."

I think they were aware that this "experiment" would require vigilance from the citizenry and their elected officials. Sadly we don't have enough of that now.