Speculative Stephen

In 1787 representatives of the newly freed states met in Philadelphia to discuss improvements to the federal government. The Articles of Confederation were intended to unite the colonies while permitting their local governments to maintain a great deal of independence. But the delegates quickly agreed that the weak Articles couldn’t be revised. They scrapped them altogether and drafted the Constitution, centered on the principle of separation of powers.

It has survived for two centuries and some change, despite periods of unrest, a brutal civil war, and threats of foreign invasion. We’ve had bad leaders: incompetent presidents, ineffective legislators, corrupt judges. But the Constitution has survived. I worry that today’s inactive Congress and overzealous presidential administration might be its undoing.

The preamble to the Constitution is brief and to the point. Who adopted the Constitution? “We the People of the United States.” What was its purpose? “Union, …Justice, …domestic Tranquility, …common defence, …general Welfare, and …Liberty.” How did they do it? By ordaining a king or some other ruler? No, they “ordain[ed]…this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Key to the Constitution is the separation of powers. Congress, its importance indicated by its placement as Article I, holds the legislative power. It is the purest representation of the will of the people. Article II created the presidency. The President is vested with the executive power, or the ability to enforce the laws. Printing money, organizing the military, conducting wars, all done under the direction of the president after being authorized by Congress. Finally, Article III created the judiciary. If the meaning of a law isn’t clear or a crime to prosecute, the judiciary considers the matter in the courts.

Why the separation of powers? Because these men had seen how a government that gave all of these powers to one man or a small group of them often turned tyrannical, they wanted to minimize the ability for such a thing to happen in their new country.

It wasn’t an efficient system. There are a lot of friction points. Congress must get a majority to pass a law. Then a different elected official, who might disagree with it, enforces the law. And then, when there are inevitable ambiguities and disagreements about what the law means in practice, we don’t go to Congress and ask them what they meant. We go to a different group of people entirely, the courts. They have to figure out what they think the law says.

It’s incredibly frustrating to elect people and then nothing happens. And so we’ve had presidents since number 2, Thomas Jefferson, who act first and deal with the consequences later. It’s questionable whether he had the authority to sign the Louisiana Purchase. And today President Trump who is acting first and dealing with the consequences later. As Congressional representatives focus on making TikTok videos, Trump is passing and interpreting laws, undoing the hard work to separate the powers of government and keep them separate.

While I happen to disagree with many of Trump’s policies specifically (I’m pro-immigrant, pro-free trade, and pro-free speech), I wasn’t exactly a fan of Biden’s similar (in kind, not degree) assumption of more-than-intended power. But Trump has gone far beyond anything any of his predecessors did:

• Pressuring universities to adopt administration priorities.
• Using executive orders to punish disfavored law firms.
• Cancelled funding for programs Congress mandated
• Coopted Congress’s explicit tariff-setting power for himself, likely beyond any delegation intended by Congress
• Used the DOJ to prosecute his enemies, firing prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to his will

Even if you think all these actions are justified and that Trump will stop here, what will the next president do?

President Trump and Vice President Vance, among others, have argued that the president represents the will of the people, since he is directly elected. This is nonsense, of course. The president is not directly elected, though this has only mattered a handful of times. Even if he’d had 75% of the vote (he had 49.81%), the idea that one man can represent the will of 340 million people better than Congress is nonsensical. If the president represents anyone, he is meant to represent the will of Congress, enforcing the laws they’ve passed.

I don’t want a king. Even if Trump didn’t want to be a king, his actions are making it a lot easier for his successors to be one. Now is the time to stand up and demand that Congress act. Now is the time to cheer on the judges who are correctly using the Constitution to keep the president in check.

I want an active and vigorous Congress. I want a president whose greatest loyalty is to the Constitution, not himself. I want a judiciary using good judgment. I want citizens who can talk to each other and resolve differences using the institutions our ancestors created for us and who work to fix the mistakes they made.

No kings, now or ever.