Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
According to the Constitution, the President has the lightest job in the three branches of government. He doesn’t need to attain the heights of wisdom and knowledge that members of the other two branches must. He has to possess social maturity and honesty, but his job is limited to executing the legislation passed by Congress and overseeing military action when Congress declares war. His job takes administrative skill, not policy-making skill.
Today, our current President has made the job into the heaviest in the government, arrogating virtually all national government power to himself.
John Quincy Adams served one term as President from 1825 to 1829. He wanted the presidency to exercise more power than it had available, but rather than usurp power, he stayed in his own constitutional lane.
After Adams left the presidency, he went on to serve in the branch of government with the real sovereign power, the U.S. Congress. There he served in the House of Representatives for nine terms, championing policies he could not unilaterally implement while President.
Many Americans are confused about the standard of law that governs America. Is it Congressional law, judicial law, or Presidential law? What about Constitutional law?
Increasingly there is only one law a great many Americans follow, and that is the word of the 47th President. In sum, the long-enduring, written, foundational law reflecting the ethical and humanitarian directives of our ancestors is nowhere to be found in contemporary life in the United States.
The new law is the flip-flopping policy of an executive branch leader who can do no wrong in the eyes of the Supreme Court and in the minds and hearts of his political base.
Donald Trump, not content to be totally in charge of American government and cultural institutions, has now made a bid to be controller of the entire world, or at least the countries of the United Nations assembled in New York City not long ago.
In an hour-long talk there, he essentially made a campaign speech about how the countries of the Western world are all screwed up and must listen to him if they are ever to fix their countries.
He said, America is “the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.” He also said, “The only thing that solves war and wars is action,” giving the impression that stronger war is needed to supplant existing weak war. Summarizing his judgment on the nations of the world, he said, “Your countries are going to hell.”
To underscore Trump America’s superiority to all other nations, President Trump has declared that America is entering its “Golden Age.” He apparently is referring to the Golden Age of Monarchy in America (GAMA). His personal palace is loaded to the gills with gold-gilt fixtures. He has placed his name on growing numbers of cultural and historical landmarks and his graven image on coins and greenbacks. The poor and middle classes, once the beneficiaries of upward mobility, now must live however the new billionaire governing aristocracy tells them to live, like without unions and without a federal government.
America used to be a big country. We were so big that we needed 175 million adults to govern our vast territory. Today, America is an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny nation, barely observable on a map of the globe. That is because we only have one person governing the whole nation. If one person can govern an entire country, we must be a very tiny country indeed, or else a country made up of very tiny and impotent human beings.
Is it possible for our nation to ever get past our current mimicking of the power and glam of the nation we rebelled against in 1776, and return to a place of healing and renewal that we can all live with?
There is a balm for political institutions that has extraordinary healing power. It is the foundational law of our own original Constitution written in 1787.
That system of law blends limited, conservative national government with liberal social policies decided by all the people of states and localities. That Constitution requires legal-historical-political science education for young people, heavy restraints on monopolistic greed and crime, a balance of power at all levels of government, term limits for elected offices, and an impeachment process to remove rogues who overthrow the law.
It is time to familiarize ourselves with this document and apply its organizational and operational principles to what is left of our evaporating humanitarian values and institutions.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
