Pros And Cons Of An Imperial Presidency

“I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead” (Nixon, NY Times). This is what former President, Richard Nixon, said in 1974 about the ease of firing nukes, which if done, sends off alarms about an imperial presidency. An imperial presidency is scary and enormously dangerous because it gives one person the unequivocal power to rule over a country. For a long time across many different political science fields, people have studied whether or not an imperial presidency is achievable, including most recently Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith. In the year 2012, Goldsmith published a novel called Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11. In the text, he states that due

These checks are ones on the president, executive branch, and just government, in general, to make sure they are not overstepping their powers. Checks and balances are important because it keeps people in power faithful to the constitution and the rule of law. The checks include branches of government such as the Judiciary, otherwise known as the Courts, who work as a neutral arbiter. For instance, when President Trump issued his third provisions of the travel ban, it still had denied the rights of Muslims under the 14th Amendment stating “equal protection” from coming into the country (Cornell). That is when the Hawaii federal judge, Derrick Watson, stepped in and blocked the major controversial parts of the order. Without judges that protect the constitution, the travel ban might have still been in effect which would allow President Trump as well as other presidents to sign orders at will without living up to the constitution in full extent. In the words of Goldsmith, “the courts...remain supreme” (Goldsmith, 188). Additionally, agencies within the executive can be a check on the president. For example, when there were numerous reports that came out about Russia meddling in the election to help President Trump win, the Justice Department hired an outside special investigator, Robert Mueller, to find the underlying cause of the situation. Thus, with the accountability checks in place, they prove that President Trump cannot be an imperial president because no matter what he does, there are going to be people from the outside watching his every move, waiting for the moment he decides to put forth something unconstitutional, so that no one’s liberties are infringed upon throughout the