It is that time again: The airwaves are flooded with campaign ads. John Sununu puts New Hampshire first, he’ll lower costs, he’ll fight for you. Scott Brown will defend our values and bring leadership to Washington. Chris Pappas will take on anyone to do what’s best for New Hampshire.
The ridiculousness of some of their claims notwithstanding, these ads all miss something. Yes, we send representatives to the House and to the Senate to represent the interests of New Hampshire, but they have another responsibility — the responsibility to represent the interests of the nation and uphold the Constitution. It is in this role that Congress is failing miserably, and it is a role almost totally ignored by many, if not all of the candidates.
The framers would almost certainly not recognize today’s political landscape. They envisioned a delicate balance between the three branches with none of them being dominant. They envisioned a strong executive but one with limits. They feared another monarch or that an American Ceasar would emerge but also recognized that an elected legislature could trample the people’s liberty just as easily as a king.
To combat these fears, they devised a system of government where each branch’s powers were carefully enumerated and gave each branch the power to check the other. They set up a system with a continuous struggle for power, one where no one branch could gather all the power of government onto itself. Until now.
From the beginning, presidents have sought to expand the executive’s power. Washington established the idea of executive privilege, Jefferson went beyond his enumerated powers to purchase the Louisiana Territory and Lincoln took liberties with the Constitution during the Civil War. In all three cases however, they recognized and respected the limits on their power.
A subtle change began during the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Prior to their administrations, presidents saw their role within the bounds envisioned by the founders, that of a buffer and a check against the potential abuses of majority rule. Roosevelt and Wilson saw themselves not as a check against the majority but as their spokesman. That role continued to evolve through the depression and World War II and seemingly culminated with Nixon’s belief that the president was above the law. We all thought it did, but sadly, we were mistaken.
What has changed since then? It is not so much that the presidency has changed but rather, it is Congress that has changed. Over the years, because of politics or a lack of political courage, Congress has delegated many of their Constitutional powers, such as the power to levy tariffs and war powers, to the president. Yet, in the last decade or so, a more insidious change in Congress has occurred; the total abandonment of their duty to serve as a check on executive overreach. It has thought of itself less as an equal branch of government and more as an extension of the executive.
Congress now acts in one of two extremes — either in blind devotion to a president of their own party or mindless opposition to one of the other. There is no longer any middle. Perhaps partly due to 9/11 and the ensuing culture wars, each party began to distrust the motives of the other and the attitude of “if you are not with me, you are against me” took hold. Distrust morphed into enmity and opposition became not disagreements over policy but more akin to treason.
James Madison, in Federalist #47, wrote that combining the powers of government in one branch is the definition of tyranny. This is where we find ourselves today. Such an arrangement has as its only safeguard against an imperial president, the good behavior of the individual occupying that office. That safeguard no longer exists. Congress, by tolerating the president’s abuse of power and its failure to rein him in only serves to encourage more abuses. Due mainly to Congress’s unwillingness to act, we have come to the end of the road we thought we had avoided with Nixon’s resignation, the imperial presidency.
It is quite apparent that Congress, as presently constituted, will not change. It will continue to tolerate and enable ever greater abuses of power by this president. Very well, if Congress will not change, we, the voters, will have to change Congress.
To do that, we must reject the same tired, old candidates and the same tired, old messaging. We need candidates who not only will represent us well in Washington but candidates who have a respect and appreciation for their Constitution role in government, candidates less beholden to party and more to country.
We need candidates who don’t just pay lip service to being independent from the president, but who actually will be, who will hold the president, no matter his or her party, accountable to both the people and the Constitution.
Michael Pelchat is a retired pharmacist and current history student. He lives in Webster.