December 19th, 2016 โ In an interview in early December, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that President-elect Donald Trump is committed to respecting the constitutional prerogatives of Congress. โWeโve talked aboutโฆthe separation of powers,โ he told โ60 Minutes.โ โHe feels very strongly, actually, that under President Obamaโs watch, he stripped a lot of power away from the Constitution, away from the legislative branch of government, and we want to reset the balance of power so that [the] people and the Constitution are rightfully restored.โ
If history is any guide, Mr. Ryanโs optimism is misplaced.
During the election of 1912, the Progressive candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, articulated a populist defense of virtually unchecked executive power, declaring that the president is a โsteward of the peopleโ who can do anything that the Constitution does not explicitly forbid. Rooseveltโs rival, the Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, defended a far more constrained view of executive power, holding that the president could only do what the Constitution explicitly authorized.
Ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Republican and Democratic presidents have embraced Theodore Rooseveltโs view, asserting ever more expansive visions of the presidentโs ability to do whatever he likes without congressional approval. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama aggressively deployed executive power to circumvent Congress, and their partisans accepted it. During his own campaign, Mr. Trump declared, โI am your voiceโ and โI alone can fix it.โ This is not the rhetoric of a president who intends to defer to the legislative branch.