Another Inauguration of the Imperial Presidency
By David J. Theroux • Sunday January 18, 2009 5:01 PM PDT • 10 Comments
America’s first president George Washington noted that:
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
And 19th-century English historian and political philosopher Lord Acton incisively stated that:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 1887
The inauguration of a new President of the United States is an immense spectacle. Despite the fact that the U.S. was specifically founded as a republic opposed to monarchism, royalism, and absolutism, the U.S. Presidency has become the Imperial Presidency, projecting power globally without restraint and by far the most powerful position in the world today, dwarfing the powers of the greatest emperors and kings of yesteryear. Moreover, the U.S. government is almost entirely the Presidency. The budgets of the Congress and the Supreme Court are virtually inconsequential compared with that of the Executive Branch. The Presidency after all includes all of the departments of the federal government, including Treasury, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Labor, Transportation, Defense, etc.; the IRS, CIA, NSA, NASA and the FBI; all of the U.S.’s nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, spy satellites, aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and hundreds of military bases worldwide; the huge tracts of federal lands, minerals, highways, and waterways; all of the regulatory agencies including the FTC, SEC, FDA, OSHA, and EPA; the list is in fact just too long to even recount here and to create an organizational chart defies imagination.
But to be so pervasive and so powerful, the Imperial Presidency is far, far more. For most Americans, the Presidency has become their sovereign king and father figure who stands above and beyond us mere citizens in order to oversee our lives and our well-being and assuage our fears (please see our book, Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government, by Senior Fellow Robert Higgs). As such the Imperial Presidency is really a secular religious “divinity,” an earthly “messiah” who many believe will save them from all forms of harm by wielding government power against others, even if this means trampling on their lives, liberties and property. As a result, around the Presidency has grown a cult of power and personality not unlike that of many rulers of the past. The spectacle and circus of a Presidential inauguration is really only an inkling of what we all witness day in and day out in the media of the cultural trappings of the glorification and worship of the Imperial Presidency.
But stripped of such superficial pomp and vanity what do we really have? Doesn’t each president after all take an oath of office to protect and preserve the U.S. Constitution and its limits on Executive Power? So how do George W. Bush and his predecessors stack up in upholding this pledge? Have they increased or decreased peace, prosperity, and liberty, and upheld the Constitution in the process? Our new book by Senior Fellow Ivan Eland, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, could not be more timely in tracing the hypocrisy and folly of Presidential power-mongering. Will the incoming President Barack Obama have the integrity, insight, and common sense to begin dismantling the powers and trappings of what has become the Imperial Presidency? Only time will tell, but despite the rhetoric for “hope” and “change,” every indication now says that he will only fan the flames higher. After all, “power corrupts” and for the Imperial Presidency, “it is good to be King.”
Tags: American History, Civil Liberties, Elections, Personal Liberty, Presidential Power, Religion, The State 
Well, since the news is out that the inauguration will be more expensive than the other four most expensive ones combined, I have to say no. Add to that the Institute for Liberty’s analysis which found that the big party will issue forth 525 million tons of carbon, something that would take the average family 60,000 years to accomplish and one has to admit there is already change in the air.
Okay, so on two indicators, fiscal restraint (in a time of supposed economic hardship) and environmental/energy leadership, we find the Big O is already batting zero. Care to make a prediction on war mongering or accountability/ transparency?
RickC | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
Obama didn’t build this power base and I have yet to find one article critical of Bush for exploiting it. I hold out hope that Obama won’t exploit his new found toys; but am realistic enough to know that power corrupts.
About the inauguration everyone assumes the huge price tag is the truth but where is the source for the information? The original AP article did not name a source or even name a report where the estimate could have been gleamed from–they just throw a number out there and the public bought it. I find that really ironic. You hate the MSM for lying when it suits you and then believe the same folks where it furthers your rant.
DesertRose | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
DesertRose, The Independent Institute and others have been condemning Bush’s power grabs for eight years.
Anthony Gregory | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
Here are four headlines from MSNBC alone:
“Can Obama Overcome Markets in Crisis?” I think they’ve got that reversed, don’t you?
“Obama Calls Americans to Service” Replace “service” with “servitude” and it just about describes reality.
“Obama: A Leader for the ‘We’ Generation” I think I’m going to vomit.
“Dear Mr. President: How Obama Can Fix Travel” Sure. A man who knows nothing about the travel industry will magically right all the wrongs that plague the airlines, highways and sea lanes. Yeah, that’s going to happen.
One thing is for certain: anyone that can read claptrap like this and find it believable needs to be lobotomized.
Steve Hogan | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
My own opinion is that the Obama administration will see the change in the U.S.regime from a semi-fascist to a full fascist regime. This is in part the result of the constant “emergencies” of the Bush administration which has cowed Congress into abandoning its main check upon the executive–the power of the purse–but also its reflects the stated intention of President Obama to engage in a far more aggressive foreign policy and a far more intrusive domestic policy.
rtbohan | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
America is finished. It is not because of Obama or Bush or any other power crazy person. The reason this is so is because collectively, Americans have lost their way. We are fat, lazy, unwilling to correct our children, lawless, selfish people.
There I said it.
You will never hear that kind of truth from a politician because he or she would never get elected. When Bill Cosby got up and told young people to pull their pants up, stop whining and get a life, he got so much flak he didn’t know which way to look.
That man should have been running for president but, once again we are looking for a wizard. But there isn’t a wizard, only the same stupid men making the same stupid decisions.
Elmo | Jan 20, 2009 | Reply
Interesting perspective; yes, the Executive is too powerful by far. But he was voted in—didn’t get there by birth or military force. Robert Higgs bemoans this ofte, the fact that citizens are ALLOWING the encroachment of freedoms to happen.
And I think you’re right; people want a saviour and father figure to rescue them. It’s easier to sit back and wait for salvation than to take responsibility for your own individual situation and take action.
It is a shame that the entire subject of executive power never comes up as a national, mainstream discussion. Neither has the subject of whether the government legally had the right to devote hundreds of billions they don’t have to the bailout.
Wonder what the high school textbooks will say in 10 years about the separation of powers and system of “checks and balances.”
PLJ | Jan 20, 2009 | Reply
PLJ: Although Obama received 69,456,897 votes or 52.9% out of the total of 131.2 million who voted, please keep in mind that this is 61.6% of the total of 213,005,467 eligible voters. In other words, even though he received a larger number of votes than has been the case in prior presidential elections, Obama was only elected by 33.6% of those eligible to vote, which means that a minority determined the outcome of who rules over everyone. Hardly democratic.
Nevertheless, you are quite correct that most people acquiesce to such an outcome and rule because they largely believe that not having an Imperial Presidency is inconceivable and indeed a “blessing.” However, not only is this support for centralized power entirely foolish and unfounded, as Robert Higgs has shown, unraveling such a system is simply a matter of a critical mass of the public coming to this realization and then withdrawing their sanctioning of such power by “Just saying no!”
Incidentally, the best discussion of this key insight into the true nature of political power is the classic, 16th century monograph, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, by Étienne de la Boétie. Needless to say, to avert such an unraveling of its sovereignty, the Imperial Presidency must go to great lengths to maintain the pretense of the majesty and “divinity” of its power and privilege.
David Theroux | Jan 20, 2009 | Reply