In many nations, the positions of head of
state and head of government are divided. The head of government is the chief officer
of the executive branch, and the head of state is the public representative whose duties
vary depending on the nation's constitution. In Austria, the president is the head of state,
and the federal chancellor is the head of government. In Denmark, the queen is the head
of state, and the prime minister is the head of government. In the United States, the president
is both head of state and head of government. Internationally, this is not unusual, as many
nation-states in Africa and South America combine head of state and head of government,
but this is unusual – even unique – in the global north, the term associated with
rich nations. Due to this consolidation of power within the structure of the United States
as well as the international influence and wealth of the United States, the president
is arguably the most powerful and influential individual in the world. The President of
the United States is the only nationally elected representative in the nation. Other representatives
are elected only by their district, only by their city, and so forth, depending on the
political office. The President, so they say, represents the entirety of the nation. Every
four years, the people of the United States of America take all of their rights, their
safety, their autonomy, and their power, and willingly hand it all over to this representative. This is the one act, they are told, that defines
them as Americans and as good citizens. The people have been conditioned to imagine the
general election as an exercise in democracy that faithfully elects their representative
instead of seeing it how it functions in practice: choosing who will rule over them. The people
frame this relationship of power as the people above the president, having final authority
on who will be the president, but once said president is elected, the relationship grants
authority to the president, not the people, making the election not an exercise in power
but the surrender of power. The right to choose the president is certainly a lot better than
no right to choose the president, and we absolutely should exercise that right, but the existence
of a head of state – chosen or otherwise – does not make us more powerful. Because
of this emphasis on the election, this focus on one day of action, the ritual of the general
election hides opportunities for more direct action: activism, protest, building solidarity
through groups and unions – actual democratic power. Self-governance. Democracy taken seriously.
Once we fill out our ballots, we neglect to exercise our agency for years, drifting through
our days, safe in the knowledge that our ruler has our best interests at heart – a faith
in paternalism more than government, worship more than autonomy. Defenders of this consolidation
of power invariably reference the “checks and balances” that children in the United
States are taught and then expected to assume are functioning properly as adults. However, the increasing authority of a single
individual calls this common wisdom into question. The Constitution of the United States, once
granting the president only the authority of a functionary officer, has been stretched
to give the president far greater authority than the legislature in many instances and
absolute authority in other instances. Defenders of this consolidation of power often retreat
to referencing kings and queens to draw contrast between the antiquated executive power of
old that the colonists defeated during the American Revolution and the modern, allegedly
“checked” executive power of today. While the President of the United States is not
a king, the president's reach and influence is greater than, say, King George III. An
18th century king could not wage war through drone strikes and did not have access to a
nuclear arsenal. The President of the United States in the 21st century has been granted
– and in some cases has granted himself – unilateral authority that bypasses Congress.
An 18th century king did not have a surveillance system to spy on every citizen of the entire
nation, but a 21st century president nominates the heads of the National Security Agency,
Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security,
and the heads of a number of other federal organizations that control and surveil the
people. The only way in which an 18th century king
was more powerful than a 21st century president was that their power was established through
hereditary inheritance instead of an election. However, some presidents and presidential
candidates are relatives of former presidents or are born into the wealth required to launch
such a campaign. The president, unlike a king, may have term limits, but the president establishes
federal officers and nominates court of appeals judges, district court judges, and Supreme
Court justices who are loyal to the president's political goals and ideology. In effect, they
continue the president's rule through ideology long after the president has retired or even
died. The modern President of the United States has significantly more power than King George
III, who, lest we forget, was cast aside to form the independent nation to begin with.
The increasing overreach of the executive branch is not only a failure of checks and
balances in one nation, though. It is the inevitable outcome of vertical power hierarchies
and the increasing authority of the modern state – a region in which the use of legitimate
violence has been monopolized. States granting more and more violent authority to themselves
internationally runs parallel to the president granting more and more violent authority to
himself. The President of the United States is simply the most obvious example of this
unassailable pattern of the past few centuries. If we acknowledge that the fewer who hold
power, the less democracy we have, and the more power that these few have, the less democracy
we have, then we have to conclude that the existence of the modern president of the United
States, meaning incredible power held by only one individual, makes us less free. How did
this happen, how does it currently function, and what can we do about it? [I. The Origins
of the Presidency] Modern glorification of the president sets Americans' imaginations
on George Washington as the father of the nation, and if he were the first president,
then surely that is when the nation truly began – but that is not true. Following
the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the United States of America did not have a President
for thirteen years. The Articles of Confederation did not create an office of the presidency,
an executive. Instead, the first organization of the government of the United States was
represented by coequal states with a horizontal distribution of power – not vertical. Some
historians claim that the Articles of Confederation “failed” because this early constitution
created a “weak” government, but modern scholarship and research shows that the economy
was doing well during the 1780's. According to Dana D. Nelson, author of Bad for Democracy,
the office of the presidency was created to better control the people. “This growing democratic involvement was
amplified in the increasing phenomenon of extragovernmental organizations of people:
county assemblies, watchdog committees, radical associations, and other 'unofficial' out-of-door
actions. We typically remember these self-organizations of citizens in the framers’ hostile terms,
as a threat to orderly government. This might sometimes have been true. But from another
vantage, we can just see them as people excited about and experimenting with new practices
of participatory self-government. … It was this democratic excitement that the new office
of the president was designed, in part, to calm.” Radical, free associations and rebellions
against the wealthy class concerned the Founding Fathers, as they themselves were among the
wealthy class. At the Constitutional Convention, the signers aimed to put a stop to this and
create a “strong” government to better control the poor. With this came the creation
of the executive officer – the president. So concerned were the Founding Fathers that
Alexander Hamilton infamously suggested that the President be chosen for life and that
they people are not to be trusted. In his own words “All communities divide themselves
into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of
the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally
this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent
and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” Although the Constitutional Convention did
not take Hamilton's advice about the nation being ruled by an executive chosen for life,
his general beliefs about the control of the people – those he did not consider 'well-born'
– was accepted. Neither the Articles of Confederations nor the initial Constitution
of the United States provided for popular elections, except for the House of Representatives,
but only for property-holding white men. The Constitution provided for Senators to be elected
by the state legislators, not the people, for the President to be elected by electors
chosen by the state legislators, not the people, and for the Supreme Court to be appointed
by the President. If we acknowledge that the fewer people are given power, the less democracy
there is, and the more power that the few are given, the less democracy there is, then
the creation of the presidency in the Constitution of the United States made the people less
free. Bestowing incredible power into very few is argued as a means of maintaining peace
and defeating disorder, as was said in the Federalist Papers, but the aim of the state
itself is not to maintain order as a kind impartial judge. The state maintains a particular
kind of order, a particular distribution of power, a particular distribution of wealth.
The “disorder” that worries the state is rebellion against those who control the
wealth. With this in mind, the creation of the president by the very class who controlled
the wealth can be seen as fortifying itself against rebellion, and maintaining control
over the poor, over the people in general. There was a brief moment in history in which
the United States, even with the dissolution of the Articles of Confederation, could have
continued without a president. During the Constitutional Convention, those present debated
forming an executive office that would be shared, perhaps co-equally, among several
people. A concept not unlike the Swiss Model of government today. Those who supported this
model of the executive branch perhaps feared what a single executive could do, having only
recently cast off the King of England. Proponents of a single president argued, instead, that
a sole executive would offer a sense of governmental strength, or, to put it in more realistic
terms, a single executive would have the people attach their sense of self to a single man.
That single man – that president – would represent the nation to the people. Attacking
the president would be seen as tantamount to attacking the nation. The people would
learn to “trust” the president in spite of what he might do. In other words, for reasons
of propaganda and control, a sole executive who “represented” the nation suited the
interests of the wealthy political class. We see this in action even today, as criticizing
the president is met with cries of “That's your president!” by his defenders. If the
president is criticized by a foreign power, his defenders will feel that they, too, have
been insulted, and will then support the president with even greater zeal. The president represents
the “strength” of the nation. Strangely, when Americans are unsatisfied
with a president’s performance, instead of believing the president should have less
power or finding ways to limit the president's power, the president is given more power,
with the promise that greater authority will allow the president to accomplish his goals.
This is touted as “strong leadership” instead of what it is: the consistent increase
presidential power throughout the course of American history. [II. Pardons and the Protection
of the Presidency] Presidential powers are not simply those written explicitly in the
United States Constitution. They are also a series of “implied” powers that a president
has suggested that he has, then has exercised successfully, subsequently creating a precedent
either in law or in ritual to normalize and codify this power. Article II, Section II
of the Constitution establishes the authority of the president, but this authority has been
stretched and expanded through these “implied” powers. For example, the power to pardon is
explicitly given in Article II, Section II, Clause 1, but the manner in which this should
be carried out as well as limits on pardons are vague. Pardons are only mentioned once
in the Constitution, practically in passing, not even given its own sentence. “...and
he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States,
except in Cases of Impeachment.” Because the entirety of the pardon power is
less than half a sentence, presidents have pushed the limits of pardons to suit their
political goals and personal interests, and since the Supreme Court is often made up at
least partly by justices who were chosen by that very president, this executive overreach
is often held up as constitutional and therefore permissible by future presidents as well.
For example, in 1865, Congress passed a law that disbarred former members of the Confederacy.
Augustus Hill Garland, a former Confederate Senator, received a pardon from President
Andrew Johnson. This ended up in the Supreme Court, and the Court sided with President
Johnson. Because of this reaffirmation of the absolute nature of the presidential pardon,
the president can even pardon individuals who have not yet been charged or convicted
– pre-emptive pardons. That was the court precedent used in the presidential pardon
of Richard Nixon. It also allowed President George H.W. Bush to pardon former Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger and former CIA official Duane Clarridge before they were
tried on Iran-Contra Affair charges. Presidential authority that is “implied” but not explicitly
stated by the constitution is often cited, but implied limitations are hypocritically
ignored. For example, the end of the sentence, “...except in Cases of Impeachment.” is
implied to bar the president from pardoning anyone being impeached or anyone involved
in charges related to the president's own impeachment. However, because it does not explicitly say
so or go into details, the “traditional” view of this part of the clause is that only
impeachment charges themselves are precluded from presidential pardons. The impeachment
charges against President Donald Trump focuses predominantly on his allegedly withholding
of foreign aid from Ukraine, but the articles of impeachment also referenced his “previous
invitations of foreign interference in United States elections,” meaning Russian interference
in the 2016 election. Roger Stone was convicted of obstructing an investigation into Russian
election interference. This means that President Trump should not have been able to commute
Stone's sentence since his conviction was related to Trump's impeachment charges. The
part of the clause about impeachment is clearly meant to suggest that the president cannot
use the pardon to protect himself. Nevertheless, Stone's sentence was commuted. Wealthy individuals
who commit crimes in favor of the president know that they can be pardoned or have their
sentence commuted if they are caught. For example, President Ronald Reagan pardoned
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, having previously been convicted of 14 counts
of illegal contributions to Richard Nixon. President Donald Trump pardoned Dinesh D'Souza
for his illegal campaign contributions. In short, implied powers are utilized, and implied
limitations are ignored. Although the president seemingly does not
have the power to pardon himself, he is almost completely protected from prosecution, absolving
anything he does in office of any legal consequences. The United States Constitution does not say
that the president cannot be charged, arrested and prosecuted. Who says that the president
cannot be prosecuted? The Department of Justice. And who selects Attorney General, the head
of the department? The president. Thus, even though it is technically not law or in the
constitution, the policy to protect the president enforced by a federal executive department,
whose head is chosen by the president. This immunity from prosecution is another example
of the president becoming more powerful over time, as the Department of Justice that protects
the president did not exist until 1870, almost a century after the United States declared
its independence. The structure of the government changed to give even greater power to the
president. The only remedy for a criminal president is
the impeachment process outlined in the Constitution, Article II, Section IV: “The President,
Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office
on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
However, the makeup of the nation and how it interacts with the government changed following
the signing and ratification of the Constitution that outlined this process. The Constitution was signed in 1787 and was
in effect by 1788. Only after its ratification did the United States have its first formal
political party, the Federalist Party, in 1789. This spun out of the Federalist and
Anti-Federalist debates in drafting the Constitution. Due to party loyalty, no president has ever
been convicted by the Senate. The House of Representatives has impeached Andrew Johnson,
Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but the Senate has never convicted. This is because the Constitution
states that the House only requires a simple majority, but the Senate requires a two-thirds
vote to convict, meaning the vote to convict must be bipartisan. If there were, say, three
major parties in the United States, a Senate conviction might be possible, but in the two-party
system, the barrier is too high. Due to the emergence of the party system, the president
is nearly invulnerable to conviction by the senate, and even if he were convicted, the
Constitution states that the penalty for conviction is simply removal from office. The Senate
is not putting the president on “trial” in the tradition sense. If the president ever
feels that he could be convicted by the Senate and charged after he is no longer a sitting
president, he can always resign before impeachment even comes up in the House and have his vice
president pardon him in exchange for the presidency. The people of the United States are at the
absolute mercy of the president if there is nothing he can't do, and nothing he can't
get away with. If the president is effectively above the
law, then the president has too much power. [III. War and Foreign Policy] According to
Bad for Democracy by Dana Nelson “The Constitution, as we know, both defines and limits the power
of the three branches. Its description of presidential powers, however, is both less
extended and less precise than its description of the scope and limits of the legislative
and judicial branches – a vagueness within which claims to executive power have found
traction. … It also seems possible that understandings of the founders’ 'intent'
have changed with the times. To take a prominent example of such a historical shift, the Constitution
denominates the president as 'commander in chief.' This is a title that seemingly decrees
wide powers over democracy for the president. But most governmental historians agree that
the title – invented by King Charles of England in 1639 and regularly granted to the
British colonies’ governors – was a simple and hollow formality, not a signal that the
president was to be vested with supreme constitutional agency...” Even the authors of the aforementioned
Federalist Papers, who were strongly in favor of having a president, were explicit that
there was no intention in the Constitution whatsoever to give significant war powers
to a single individual, even the president. Nevertheless, when a president wanted more
power in foreign policy, he exercised it through this vague, formal title of commander-in-chief. For example, when John Tyler assumed the presidency
after the passing of William Henry Harrison, he quickly informed the cabinet – who had
already decided all issues during Harrison's brief tenure – that he, instead, would have
the final say on all matters, and if they had a problem with that, they could resign.
When nearly all of them did, in fact, resign, he chose a cabinet full of loyalists who would
not oppose him. Tyler was so reviled that he was expelled from the Whig Party. Tyler
expanded the powers of the presidency in regards to the military through his annexation of
Texas. Tyler used Secret Service funds to support military actions without congressional
approval. This effectively seized war powers in peacetime. When Abraham Lincoln assumed
his office, Congress was in recess, so he delayed their convening so that he could act
unilaterally, enlarge both the army and navy beyond their authorized strength, spent public
money without congressional approval, and instituted a naval blockade. Theodore Roosevelt
expanded war powers further by interjecting into the Russo-Japanese War and committing
the US military to support Japan. When he was told that doing so without Congress was
unconstitutional, he simply disagreed, and that was that. Roosevelt claimed that the
powers implied in the Constitution – “He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully
executed” – was both vague and broad enough for him to do as he pleased. All these instances had the president decide
that he had more power than previously used, institute that power, and wait to see if he
could get away with it. Once he did get away with it, the executive overreach was no longer
overreach. It became the norm. The Constitution is only a document, and what the Constitution
meant in theory but only be found in practice. In other words, various presidents throughout
the years determined themselves what powers the Constitution gave them by exercising implied
powers and seeing if those powers remained after initial use. Moving to more contemporary
wars, when Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, it normalized the commander-in-chief's
authority to invade and bomb even neutral countries during a time of war or peace. In
1969 and 1970, Congress voted to deny funding for US ground troops in Cambodia as well as
Laos and Thailand. Nixon signed the bills into law but also stated that doing so meant
nothing, remarking that his signature “...will not change the policies I have pursued and
that I shall continue to pursue toward this end.” Congress passed the War Powers Act
to stop Nixon, which he vetoed, which Congress finally was able to override. Nevertheless,
the damage had been done, and the War Powers Act contained enough loopholes to be effectively
worthless for future presidents. No president has accepted the constitutionality of the
War Powers Act, claiming it violates the separation of powers and the president's authority as
commander-in-chief. However, others would argue that unilateral
war powers are the actual violation of separation of powers and that the War Powers Act merely
reinforces language already in the Constitution. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court, nominated
by the President, has reaffirmed the commander-in-chief as having final authority. In 2000, the Supreme
Court turned back a challenge brought by Congress that US intervention in Yugoslavia violated
the act. In 2001, after some international back and forth over the legality of threatening
war over a matter of extradition, the administration asked Congress to pass The Authorization for
Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, a resolution that allowed the US military
to attack Afghanistan. However, in Congress' haste, it gave George W. Bush and future presidents
a blank check to wage war, order drone strikes, and commit to bombings of any nation suspected
to have terrorists, which covers, broadly, any nation. Section II of the AUMF explicitly
states that this does not replace the War Powers Act, but AUMF has made the War Powers
Act even more toothless than it once was. When a president wants to avoid the deadlines
for congressional authorization outlined in the War Powers Act, the president simply says
that the military intervention in question is not a “war” but some other action distinct
from a war – a defense sometimes used by the Barack Obama administration. Arthur M.
Schleisinger, author of The Imperial Presidency, wrote: “The Founding Fathers made a deliberate
effort to divide the control of the war powers. They vested in Congress the authority to commence
and authorize war, whether that war be declared or undeclared. At the same time they vested
in the Presidency the conduct both of ongoing foreign relations and ongoing war as well
as the right to respond to sudden attack when Congress was not in session. This division
of powers was inherently unstable. ...the presidential power to conduct diplomacy and
the congressional power to authorize hostilities had each the potentiality of overwhelming
and nullifying the other. If the President were to claim all the implications of his
control of diplomacy, he could, by creating an antecedent state of things, swallow up
the congressional power to authorize hostilities.” And that is exactly what has happened. The
president does whatever he wants, drone strikes whoever he wants, and even if Congress disagrees
and finds this unconstitutional or otherwise unlawful, the aforementioned limitations of
impeachment provide little recourse. [IV. Vetoes, Executive Orders and Federal Departments]
One power granted to the president is the ability to choose the heads of his federal
executive departments, filling them with those of similar ideology or his political cronies.
This is another example of presidential powers increasing over time because even though these
appointments are within his rights, the amount of federal executive departments and the scope
of these departments have both increased in the past two centuries. Congress set the date that the Constitution
went into effect as March 4th, 1789, and later that year the State Department, Treasury Department,
and the Department of War were officially established, but everything else came about
later. Department of Interior in 1849, Agriculture in 1862, Justice in 1870, Labor in 1913, Commerce
in 1937, Department of War changed to Department of Defense in 1947, Health and Human Services
in 1953, House and Urban Development in 1965, Transportation in 1967, Energy in 1977, Education
in 1979, Veterans Affairs in 1989, and Homeland Security in 2002. Furthermore, the president
appoints the heads of other organizations that did not exist during the time of the
Founding Fathers, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, established in 1908, the
Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the National Security Agency in 1953, and so forth. In
short, though the president always had the authority to make such appointments, the amount
of appointments did not exist until later on. These new departments and the president's
influence on said departments has given the president increasing power and control over
the centuries. These departments can (and have been) weaponized to serve the president
and his political goals. Presidents direct these departments through “executive orders”
– an authority that only exists in the Constitution because presidents have consistently said
it does and because their Supreme Courts have largely accepted this. The Constitution does not contain the words
“executive orders” – instead, presidents cite the “take care that the laws should
be executed” part, which is an extremely broad view. Some scholars believe that “take
care” certainly does not mean create but enforce federal law. Executive orders were
uncommon in the early days of the presidency, as the first five presidents signed a total
of fifteen executive orders combined. Theodore Roosevelt changed all this, signing over 1,000
executive orders. Since Roosevelt, all subsequent presidents signed over one hundred or in some
cases over one thousand executive orders. The lowest was Gerald Ford, who served less
than one term, at 169 orders, and the highest was FDR at 3,728. The President does more
than choose the heads of departments. He can, and does, control the departments as much
as he wants. According to Tara Branum, author of President or King: “The increased use
of executive orders and other presidential directives is a fundamental problem in modern-day
America. The Constitution does not give one individual an 'executive pen' enabling that
individual to single-handedly write his preferred policy into law. Despite this lack of constitutional
authority, presidential directives have been increasingly used both by Republicans and
Democrats to promulgate laws and to support public policy initiatives in a manner that
circumvents the proper lawmaking body, the United States Congress. It would be foolhardy to ignore the danger
inherent in this situation, simply because one might like the individual currently holding
the presidential pen. It would be hypocritical, as well as dangerous, to seek change when
a president from the opposing political party is in power, but to ignore the problem once
a president from one's own party has been elected.” When Congress wishes to limit
the president's influence, the often find it difficult to the president's veto power
and the loyalty of his party. A loyal political party sides with their president far more
often than not, making overriding a veto challenging. Every Bill passed by the House and Senate,
before it becomes law, must be presented to the President. He either signs it or vetoes it, returning
it to Congress. The veto can only be overridden by a two thirds majority in both the House
and Senate. Constitutional scholars and apologists for presidential power claim that this is
merely a check on the power of Congress, but the veto gives the president – a single
individual – more power than as many as 66 out of the 100 Senators. Only at 67 can
the Senate have more say-so than the president, and that does not happen all that much. It
wasn't until John Tyler, the tenth president, before a veto was overridden, and it wasn't
until Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president, before the president's success rate with the
veto fell below 50%. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president, issued 635 vetoes
and was only overridden nine times, meaning FDR's success rate with the veto was 97.6%. George H. W. Bush's success rate with his
vetoes was similar at 96.6%, Clinton at 94.4%, Obama at 91.7%, and Trump, thus far, at 100%.
The only modern president with a more mixed success rate with the veto was George W. Bush,
and even he successfully rejected bills most of the time. Generally speaking, if the president
does not want a bill to be signed into law, chances are the bill will not be signed into
law. In 1974, the president was granted even more power under the National Emergencies
Act, which formalized the rules surrounding the president's ability to call for a national
emergency. Under the act, the president grants himself
over 100 statutory powers. Everything from public health to defense. Obviously, this
can be abused by any president, as whether or not something is an “emergency” is
his judgment call alone. During the Trump administration, the president declared a national
emergency to secure funding for a border well. When the emergency was called to end by Congress,
Trump simply vetoed the bill. To put it another way, the president can decide
to grant himself significantly more power than he already has, and he is often the one
who decides whether or not to keep that power. [CONCLUSION] The pattern of presidential power
over the centuries is that the president interprets the Constitution in the broadest possible
sense, overreaches his power, and then once his executive overreach is either unchallenged
or maintained following a failed challenge by Congress, future presidents continue with
this new level power, and perform even more executive overreach. Increasing use of executive
orders and vetoes, new federal departments, war powers – all of it came about by a president
stretching the limits of power and seeing how much he could get away with. We know it
doesn't have to be this way, because it wasn't always this way. Reformists would say that
legislative reform or even a constitutional amendment outlining the limits of the presidency
even greater detail are necessary. Some reformists go further, citing European examples of the
division of power, particularly the Swiss model of government. Switzerland's “executive
branch” is actually a federal council of seven people, not one. A kind of collective
presidency. The actual “president” is elected by the federal assembly from the federal
council, but the office is mostly ceremonial, has little, if any, real power over the rest
of the council, and only serves a short one-year term. The nation is organized through cantons and
communes, and the people engage in semi-direct democracy. Aaaand some would say that we should
go even further and move toward a society without any unjust social or economic hierarchies,
which includes not only the removal of the head of state but the removal of the state.
I know which one I want. Regardless of whether one wants reform or revolution, it seems so
clear, even among moderates, that the president of the United States has far too much unilateral
authority. So much power vested in one person can be – and has been – disastrous. Haven't
we progressed enough as a society that we shouldn't need to attach our sense of worth,
sense of self, and national identity to a single individual? Our lives are our own.
We can live in a world with no more presidents.
this was a great breakdown of the slow roll of increasing presidential power and is an important message for the American people to demand more democratic institutions.
Society has progressed past the need for presidents
Finally, someone talking some fucking sense. The day after the election the storm may be clearing and the green shoots starting to peek through again. Quick, post more radical content while all the libs are off celebrating their 0.0000001% victory/defeat!
Renegade cut back with the high quality content
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
Vote
That clueless, uninformed Switzerland stanning by US leftists really annoys me. Because being the last country in Europe to grant women the vote and having the world's most restrictive naturalization laws sure is something to aspire to.
Always enjoy Leon covering American history. It is so important to share the narrative that has been repressed in popular thought for generations, but mostly restricted to little corners of exclusive academia, or only available through reading big-ass books most people don't have time, attention, or energy to read.
I honestly kinda dislike this video because Us presidents are one of my interest and it’s trying say I shouldn’t like any president