By centralizing authority so heavily, the United States has rejected a fundamental governing principle upon which it was originally founded: the separation of powers. As the French philosopher Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, a work that heavily influenced the Constitution’s framers, combining the executive and legislative means “there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch . . . that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically.” Likewise, John Adams once noted, “Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power.” (Emphasis in original.) As our country’s founders saw clearly, giving the president the right to create and enforce the law is a power highly liable to catastrophic abuse in ways that threaten the foundation of the republic itself.
Moreover, it is only in the legislature that all major factions in society can have their views taken into consideration. The president is just a signal individual who can, at best, reflect but a portion of the country. Those outside the president’s political coalition can do little except bide their time until their side is in control. But a properly functioning legislature is one where a diversity of interests can be brought meaningfully into the policymaking process. That can happen only in Congress. It is the only institution where a variety of views can be expressed, debated, and ultimately integrated into public policy that benefits the whole political community.
In the early republic, there was a process of consensus-creating at work in the legislature. Legislators debated ideas, found compromises, and presented broadly acceptable bills for the president to sign as a result. Unfortunately, that process no longer happens in today’s Congress. We have abandoned this tradition for presidential governance, under which neither side feels much obligation to compromise but rather to wait until it can use the executive to force as many unpalatable changes on the minority party as it can. This is not how republican government is supposed to function, but with so much authority vested in one individual, it is in practice how our system has worked for a generation.