Constitutional conservatives, here's your call to action

Constitutional conservatism is a venerable tradition, as old as the republic. It has championed the principles of law and order, limited government and protection of Americans’ liberty. At its peak, it was an avowed opponent of expansive executive power.

In our time, it requires a shot in the arm, a restored vitality and a renewed commitment of spirit and purpose.

Citizens in Idaho who celebrate their constitutional conservatism must rally to the roots of their heritage and protect the planks and pillars of their platform, which advocates implementation of the purposes and aims of the framers of the Constitution. They should start with a restoration of the founders’ vision of limited presidential power, which has been abandoned by both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike. Executive aggrandizement of power has become a staple, a practice that tramples on the founders’ constitutional blueprint.

What would a return to the constitutional principles of the founders look like? For starters, constitutional conservatives should understand why the framers of the Constitution created a sharply limited presidency. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention were keen students of history and were struck by the long pattern of executive abuse of power. Across the centuries, kings and despots and tyrants had pursued unilateral policies and abused their power at the expense of the people. As a consequence, the framers rightly feared expansive executive power grounded on the wit and wisdom of a single individual.

That fear shadowed and guided their careful allocation of authority to the office of the presidency that they invented. It was one of the framers’ greatest contributions to the world of law and political science.

Thus “executive power” extended only to the execution of the laws and appointments to offices created by Congress. Delegates rejected the concept of executive prerogative or emergency power because it smacked of monarchism, a concept anathema to the founders of the republic. They laid an axe to the roots of powers that had been wielded by the king. America’s break from the English model for executive power could not have been more dramatic.

As Alexander Hamilton — he of Broadway fame — declared in Federalist No. 69, for example, that while the king could take his nation to war, in America that awesome decision was the sole prerogative of Congress. The president’s authority as commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces, Hamilton explained, was limited to defending the country from sudden invasion and conducting a military offensive only after Congress had declared or otherwise authorized military hostilities.

Readers will recognize, of course, that since 1950, presidents of both political parties have usurped the congressional War Power, an aggrandizement of power that the Framers agreed would warrant impeachment. But presidents have not been deterred in their continuation of executive war-making, sending young men and women to foreign wars based on their own individual assessment of national security needs, rather than adhering to constitutional command of the collective judgment of Congress in matters of war and peace. America, of course, has paid a heavy price for unilateral executive war making, from Vietnam to Iraq.

Presidential aggrandizement of foreign policy and national security powers conferred on Congress by the framers of the Constitution has become notorious. Presidents of both parties no longer seek approval of Congress before initiating military hostilities. Congress has been relegated to the sidelines in the realm of foreign relations, despite possessing the lion’s share of the nation’s foreign affairs powers.

Presidents have been inventing new executive powers as they have strayed far beyond the founders’ vision. It is fair to say that they would not recognize the office that they created.

Executive Privilege, the assertion of power to withhold information from Congress, special prosecutors and even courts, was not created by the framers. That assertion was not invoked by a president until midway through the 20th Century. For their part, the framers appreciated the wisdom of the English practice by which the king was required to submit requested information to Parliament. If the framers had vested the president with the authority to withhold information from Congress, then, ironically, they would have been granting the president more power than that possessed by the king.

For a nation that had fought a revolution to free itself of monarchical rule, such an outrage was unfathomable. Yet, here we are in the United States, likely bearing witness to President Trump’s forthcoming claim of executive privilege to prevent members of his administration, as well as the U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, and Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, from testifying to Congress.

The Trump Administration, moreover, is defying congressional subpoenas, despite statutory commands to furnish information. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is a case in point. He has a duty under a 1924 law to deliver Trump’s taxes to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Who will sound a trumpet call for restoration of the founders’ vision? Who will answer it? Where are the constitutional conservatives in Idaho?

On Thursday night, during a lecture at the Community Library, I’ll supply the reasoning behind presidential duty to comply with subpoenas, and further explain how constitutional conservatives should understand the limits of presidential power. I hope you’ll join me.

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Dr. David Adler is President of The Alturas Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created to advance American Democracy through promotion of the Constitution, civic education, equal protection of the law and gender equality. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution, presidential power and the Bill of Rights. His scholarly writings have been quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and by Republicans and Democrats in both Houses of Congress.