INADVERTENTLY ACKNOWLEDGING THE CULT OF THE PRESIDENCY.

Rebecca Gordon confronts the tension between national greatness conservatism and libertarian conservatism.

Sometimes the right wing in this country seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a conundrum.

Do they want to strengthen the government in line with the once-fringe doctrine of the “unitary executive,” concentrating most official power in the hands of a president who would then rule more or less by fiat? That’s the fascist position.

Or would they prefer to destroy the government, to “starve the beast,” something anti-tax activist Grover Norquist used to call for decades ago? “I don’t want to abolish government,” he declared. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” That’s the anti-government nihilist position.

That's a tension as old as the Republic itself.

In the words of Paul Begala, notorious fascist, "Stroke of the pen, law of the land."  The presidency looms too large in our politics precisely because both of the fractious coalitions that call themselves major parties want the presidency, the better to sign executive orders and appoint Cabinet secretaries to issue regulations pursuant to laws passed and never revisited let alone repealed to pay off their constituencies execute the intent of Congress their way.  Give Donald Trump no powers you wouldn't want Woodrow Wilson having.  Oh, wait.

In the words of George Washington, notorious nihilist, "Government is force."  You'd think an older advocate for lesbian causes would understand that.  What was that joke about feminists organizing discussion groups?

You might not think that those two goals could coexist comfortably within a single party. And of course, you’d be right if you were talking about an ordinary American political party. But the Republicans are no longer an ordinary party. In many respects, in fact, they have become the however-fractious sole property of one Donald J. Trump. That former and quite possibly (God forbid) future president has no trouble simultaneously advocating contradictory, not to mention devastating, ideas. That’s because, for him, ideas are an entirely fungible currency that he deploys primarily to maintain the attention and adulation of his—and it is increasingly his alone—GOP “base.” And precisely because Trump has so little invested in actual policy, the right wing believes he’s a weapon they can point and shoot in whatever direction they choose.

The recent follies electing a Speaker of the House suggest the Republican delegation is not quite the sole property of Mr Trump, and with at least four political parties attempting to jam themselves into two, fractious is going to be our reality.  Just for fun, suppose somebody from that "Problem Solvers" (itself an oxymoron, often government creates the problems) coalition in the House, whether Democrat or Republican, put himself forward to be Speaker.  Where would the loudest objections come from, the Freedom Caucus or the Progressive Caucus?  It would make for compelling television, anyway.

It is reassuring, I suppose, for a self-styled progressive to rediscover the value of veto gates.

By “long-held doctrine” I mean a blueprint for democratic government that goes back to two 17th- and 18th-century political philosophers: Charles Montesquieu, who first wrote about the separation of powers, and John Locke, whose ideas about unalienable rights were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Like Montesquieu, Locke advocated for a separation of governmental powers in which the legislative, not the executive, would be supreme. In that view, the democratically elected legislature makes a nation’s laws and—just as the name suggests—the executive exists to “execute” them.

Despite their occasional homages to Montesquieu and Locke, the Heritage Foundation and its followers have flipped that thinking upside down by insisting that the Constitution considers the executive branch superior to the other two. If that were the case, wouldn’t the executive branch be described in that document’s first article? In fact, Articles I, II, and III describe the legislative, executive, and judicial functions in that order, suggesting that if any of these is superior, it is (as Locke argued) the legislative.

Look, if somebody wants to make the case that Donald Trump should not have that sort of powers, count me in, and make sure Barack Obama or his current puppet don't either.  Moreover, if scrutiny of the list of Schedule F lesser bureaucrats identifies thousands of unelected bureaucrats making policy, perhaps that would be a step toward trimming the proliferation of "shall-issue" rules, and toward smaller swarms of officers harassing the people and eating out their substance.