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| See video below. IT'S HISTORIC !!! |
*WPEP Taunton, Massachusetts
In Defense of the Executive
Editor's Note
The American presidency has always stood at the tension point between energy and restraint. The Founders designed an executive neither royal nor ornamental—an office charged with carrying the will of a free people into action. When that office loses its vigor, the republic begins to decay; when it overreaches, it courts tyranny. Statesmanship requires walking that narrow ridge.
Frank DeVito examines how our present ruling class has distorted this balance. Under the pretense of safeguarding democracy, it has drained the executive of the authority the Constitution deliberately placed there, transferring it to a permanent class of administrators and experts. The result is a quiet despotism — rule without responsibility, and a government without consent.
Acurious phenomenon has arisen in the first year of President Trump’s second administration: The (clearly manufactured and forced) “No Kings” movement. What is this all about? The No Kings website describes its reason for existence as follows: “Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People — the people who care, who show up, and who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity.”
The earnest insistence of some of the participants I’ve personally encountered goes something like this: “America was founded for the very purpose of getting rid of monarchy and creating a democratic government. Trump is behaving like a king and therefore betraying the principles of the Constitution and the American Founding.”
Let us put aside the bad faith (or, at best, the incredible ignorance) of the arguments that insist President Trump is behaving anything like an absolute monarch. Deploying the National Guard to quell rampant violent crime or sending ICE agents to deport massive numbers of illegal immigrants does not a dictator make. Trump is using his authority to go after criminals — hardly the stuff of oppressive, tyrannical regimes. Nothing Trump actually does looks anything like monarchy, despotism, autocracy, or whatever other exaggerated and inapplicable term one wants to use. Pretending Trump is doing anything more than exercising presidential authority to make good on the very issues (crime, immigration, etc.) that he was elected to address is just that: pretending.
Put aside, too, the hysterical notion that Trump is going to seize power, defy the Constitution, and run for a third term in 2028. “But he is selling ‘Trump 2028’ hats and ‘flirting with the idea of serving a third term,” they’ll say! If the Left doesn’t realize that Trump is trolling them, I don’t really know what to say.
But beyond the silly accusations that President Trump is a king or a dictator, there is something important worth noting that’s behind the No Kings movement. These folks might fancy themselves a natural continuation of the American Revolution, but they’re wrong. The Revolution was no anti-monarchical movement. It was, rather, a revolt against a lack of representation.
Certainly, there was a spirit of republicanism in the air during the Revolution— thus,there was no chance the chief executive was going to be named king. So, instead, we got a mixed government with a president and a two-chamber legislature.
It seems that the difference between president and king is worth sketching out. Indeed, it’s a difference that’s smaller than it seems. Look beyond the labels to the substance of the constitutional role of the president. Article II of the U.S. Constitution lays out the president’s role: The executive power is vested in a president, and the president alone. His cabinet officials, executive agencies, and thousands of executive branch employees who have strong civil service protections are not independent of the president; they ought to serve completely at his pleasure.
The American president is the commander-in-chief of all armed forces, may grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, has power (with the advice and consent of the Senate) to make treaties with foreign powers, makes executive and judicial appointments, and (in Article I, Sec. 7) has the power to veto laws passed by Congress.
Contrast this with, for example, the British monarchy around the time of the American Founding. The King still had some power to choose influential ministers, but these appointment powers had been largely delegated to Parliament. The powers to tax and legislate had, likewise, been transferred to Parliament. So what did the King do? He was the head of state, the representative of the nation in interactions with foreign powers. He made some appointments and had some ability to preside over and influence Parliament, but was not supreme over the legislature.
Sounds kind of like the President of the United States, doesn’t it?
What’s more, until the 22nd Amendment came into effect in 1951, there was no formal term limit on the president. While the tradition set by George Washington discouraged it, the president could serve for life. So while the “No Kings” crusaders may scream that kings are some anti-American force, and that Trump has usurped dictatorial power, the reality is that the U.S. Constitution created the role of president to be as strong as — and in many ways equivalent to — a constitutional monarch. John Adams even thought that the most appropriate description of the constitutional form of government in the United States was “a monarchical republic, or if you will, a limited monarchy.”
The president commands the military, represents the nation in foreign affairs, makes treaties, appoints judges and ministers. What is the difference between the president’s powers in Article II of the Constitution and the powers of a constitutional monarch? I’m not sure that the “No Kings” protestors, nor anyone else, can make a case for any meaningful distinction here.
This has practical implications: The destructive left undermines the power of the president. It’s not because they love the American founding and want to be faithful to the Constitution, but because the strong unitary executive created by Article II of the Constitution is an existential threat to the deep state that currently governs our nation. Think of the destructive woke programs funded by agencies from USAID to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Remember the lawfare waged by rogue and seemingly unaccountable career employees of the Department of Justice. Executive power is vested in the president, yet thousands and thousands of inferior employees within the executive branch seem quite able to undermine the president’s authority and agenda in countless ways.
Shouldn’t the president — who has been invested with executive power by American voters — be able to direct (and fire without cause) every single employee within the executive branch of government? I think so. And that would not make him a king. It would simply make him a constitutional, Article II President of the United States.
So beware that the fight for “no kings” is not about American history, not about the Constitution, not about preventing fascism or tyranny or whatever baseless accusation the left might throw at the president. “No kings” is about power. The Left knows that a president who is actually allowed to wield his constitutional authority can sweep away decades of work to entrench leftist bureaucrats within the institutions of government without accountability.
It isn’t that the Left doesn’t want a king. It is that they don’t want a president elected by the people to exercise his constitutional authority, because it interferes with their plan to rule the nation no matter who the people elect. The Constitution did not give us a king, but it did give us an executive strong enough to defend the republic from those who would dismantle it.