Striking a balance on executive authority
We should not be governed by a permanent technocratic bureaucracy. That bureaucracy needs to be accountable to elected officials put in place by the people.
Does the President have too much power, beyond what the Founding Fathers intended when they seceded from Great Britain and formed a new nation based on liberty? Yes. Should we seek to implement reforms that reduce this power and give it back to the people's representatives in Congress? Yes. Is there a wrong way to do that? Also yes. In his New York Times column, David French suggested we amend the Constitution to modify Article II, replacing this:
"The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America."
With this:
"A president of the United States of America shall execute laws passed by Congress."
The problem with French's argument is that it goes too far. The President does need to have control over executive agencies in order to implement his agenda and to enforce the laws passed by Congress. What we do not want to have is a permanent bureaucracy that can frustrate and put roadblocks in front of the president's administrative authority and policy agenda. That was the entire point of the populist uprising against the "Deep State" over the last decade.
French is correct that the President and the executive branch has amassed far too much power and is far beyond what the founders envisioned when they drafted the Constitution, but his solution would go too far in the other direction. Instead of empowering Congress, it would empower the bureaucracy. This is the dream of technocrats like Woodrow Wilson, who was most certainly an authoritarian. We should not be governed by a permanent technocratic bureaucracy. That bureaucracy needs to be accountable to elected officials put in place by the people.
This reform would have made more sense in 1900, before the federal bureaucracy became as huge and bloated as it is. But when the bureaucracy is as large and expansive as it is and has been my entire life, the President (who was elected by the people) must be able to assert his authority over that bureaucracy. A middle ground solution would be better: A mandate in the Constitution that the President must enforce laws passed by Congress. The President should not get to pick and choose what laws he will enforce.
While the pardon authority is expansive and certainly has been abused, it is an important safety valve in preventing injustice. For example, the Biden regime's persecution of a father protecting his son was an obscene miscarriage of justice and an abuse of the President's authority. Using the pardon authority to discipline vindictive politically-motivated prosecutors is an appropriate use of executive branch authority. Removing these corrupt prosecutors from federal employment is also fully appropriate.
I am all for weakening the power of the presidency and enhancing the power of Congress, but to borrow a phrase from MAGA, we have to realize what time it is. This is not 1900, when the federal bureaucracy was much smaller and less powerful than it is today. For decades, we have had federal bureaucrats implementing "regulations" that were never passed by Congress, and those "regulations" sometimes have the force of criminal law. Weakening the President's authority too much would not empower Congress, but would instead empower a permanent unaccountable bureaucracy. That is a Wilsonian solution that should be left on the ash heap of history.