By Maurizio Valsania
If there are any limits to a president’s power, it wasn’t evident from Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.
In that speech, the first before lawmakers of Trump’s second term, the president declared vast accomplishments during the brief six weeks of his presidency. He claimed to have “brought back free speech” to the country. He declared that there were only two sexes, “male and female.” He reminded the audience that he had unilaterally renamed an international body of water as well as the country’s tallest mountain.
“Our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again,” Trump asserted.
The extravagant claims appear to match Trump’s view of the presidency – one virtually kinglike in its unilateral power.
It’s true that the U.S. Constitution’s crucial section about the executive branch, Article 2, does not grant the president unlimited power. But it does make this figure the sole “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States.”
This monopoly on the use of force is one way Trump could support his 2019 claim that he can do “whatever I want as President.”
Before Trump’s speech, protesters outside had taken issue with Trump’s wielding of such unchecked power. One protester’s sign said, “We the People don’t want false kings in our house.”
With those words, she echoed a concern about presidential power that originated more than 200 years ago.
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Remnants of the monarchy
When the Constitution was written, many people – from those who drafted the document to those who read it – believed that endowing the president with such powers was dangerous.
Ratified after a lot of huffing and puffing, on May 29, 1790, by rather nervous citizens, the text of the Constitution had stirred many controversies.
It wasn’t just the oftentimes vague language, which includes head-scratchers such as the very preamble, “We the People of the United States.” Nor was the discomfort due solely to the document’s jarring brevity – at 4,543 words, the U.S. Constitution is the shortest written Constitution of any major nation in the world.
No, what made that document especially problematic, to borrow from John Adams, was that it provided for “a monarchical Republick, or if you will a limited Monarchy.”
Adams would eventually become the nation’s second president in 1797. Even though he was a staunch supporter of the Constitution, he was honest enough to take a hard look over the political layout of the new nation. And what he found were remnants of the British monarchy and traces of a king whose unchecked abuses had led the Colonists to demand their independence in the first place.
“The Name of President,” Adams couldn’t help concluding in a letter to prominent Massachusetts lawyer William Tudor, “does not alter the Nature of his office nor diminish the Regal Authorities and Powers which appear clearly in the Writing.”
Stock Montage/Archive photos, Getty Images
While Adams was only somewhat uncomfortable, as a historian of the early republic I can stress that other observers at the time were downright appalled.
In a 1787 article published in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, “An Old Whig” – identity unknown – wrote, “The office of President of the United States appears to me to be clothed with such powers as are dangerous.”
As the commander in chief of the Army, the American president “is in reality to be a king as much a King as the King of Great Britain, and a King too of the worst kind – an elective King.”
Consequently, as the author of this article resolved, “I shall despair of any happiness in the United States” until this office is “reduced to a lower pitch of power.”
‘Subjects of a military king’
Concern over a commander in chief declaring martial law, no matter the legality of the measure, was similarly on the minds of the Americans who had read the Constitution.
In 1788, a patriot who went under the pseudonym of “Philadelphiensis” – real name, Benjamin Workman – issued a sweeping warning. Should the president decide to impose martial law, “your character of free citizens” would be “changed to that of the subjects of a military king.”
A president turned military king could “wantonly inflict the most disgraceful punishment on a peaceable citizen,” the piece continued, “under pretence of disobedience, or the smallest neglect of militia duty.”
New York Public Library, Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Another power given to the president was also universally considered extremely dangerous: that of granting pardons to individuals guilty of treason.
Maryland Attorney General Luther Martin reasoned that the treason most likely to take place was “that in which the president himself might be engaged.” What the president would do, Martin wrote, would be “to secure from punishment the creatures of his ambition, the associates and abettors of his treasonable practices, by granting them pardons.”
George Mason, who participated in the Constitutional Convention and also drafted Virginia’s state Constitution, foresaw a gloomy scenario. He shivered at the idea of a president who would “screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt.”
Choosing ‘villains or fools’
The framers did limit executive power in one significant way: The president of the United States is subject to impeachment and, upon conviction of treason or other high crimes, removal from office.
But in the meantime, the president may enact irreparable damage.
The Constitution was finally ratified – but only begrudgingly by the American citizens, who feared a president’s abuse of power. More persuasive than the legal restraints placed on the office, the belief that the people would choose their leader wisely tipped the scale toward approval.
Delegate John Dickinson asked a rhetorical question: “Will a virtuous and sensible people choose villains or fools for their officers?”
Also, 18th-century common sense deemed it improbable that a person without virtue and magnanimity would run for the nation’s highest office. Americans’ faith in their first president, the upstanding George Washington, helped convince them that all would end well and their Constitution would be sufficient to protect the republic.
The Federalist Papers, the 85 essays written to persuade voters to support ratification, were suffused with this optimism.
People “of the character marked out for that of the President of the United States” were widely available, said the Federalist #67.
“It will not be too strong to say,” reads Federalist #68, “that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.”
ConSource
Government of laws?
Adams wasn’t so optimistic. He wavered. And then he flipped the issue on its head.
“There must be a positive Passion for the public good … established in the Minds of the People,” he had written in a 1776 letter, “or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real liberty.”
After almost 250 years of uninterrupted republican life, Americans are used to thinking that their nation is secured by checks and balances. As Adams kept repeating, America aims at becoming “a government of laws, and not of men.”
Americans, in other words, have long believed it is their institutions that make the nation. But the opposite is true: The people are the soul and the conscience of the republic.
Everything, in the end, boils down to the character of these people and the control they assert over who becomes their most important leader.
Maurizio Valsania is Professor of American History at the University of Torino
I grew up here, this county is ruined. says
Bwahahaha! 78% of the country is laughing at this headline.
Local says
So, it’s okay for Democrats to do it but not republicans? Just want to confirm….
Thomas Hutson says
There is one cause of the state this country is in! King Trump, but hey King does not get all the praise, the REAL dogs in this mess is nothing more than the King maker himself Roberts, the Housemaid and the rest of the Hightower!! Roberts distain for the Constitution is on public view in their decisions, their new cry is all hail the King we made him. They are a sick bunch, lifetime appointments need to be voted out!
Ben Hogarth says
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. . . .
-George Washington (Farewell Address 1796)
Richard says
I have voted Republican and also Democrat at times but never in my life would I think that the President of the USA and his side kick he sold our country to Elon Musk would purposely being destroying the USA piece by piece. They are eliminated all government departments to privately start their own departments so they can govern them the way they want. It is a sabotage on the USA. Elon Musk is eliminating the check and balances so that he is no longer held accountable for unsafe work practices in his space companies.
We witnessed on national television Trump praising Putin over a Democrat President trying to save his people and their country.
Our own Republican Congress have taken a blind eye to all of it and have done nothing to stop it. Our country is being destroyed right before our own eyes.
JW says
We are on our way to reach the ultimate dream: Form over Substance.
But don’t forget it is just a dream!
You will feel great but it will always be a dream.
He will take care of us. But it is done by putting you to sleep and just dream.
No worries. Just relax.
joe says
More “common sense” and “efficiency” from this corrupt fascist:
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-parrots-trumps-drug-war-justification-canadamexico-tariffs-even-he-weakened-fentanyl
Kennan says
A wealth of information is presented in this article in regards to the constitution, article 2, said, guard rails, and the concept of what John Adams described as limited monarchy.
This is all well and good, but the education and information provided will do no good.
My truth. We now reside in the world of “My truth”. The alternate reality and alternative facts that poison. The very fiber of an already compromised freedom. A diluted sense of free speech, depending on whose free speech is represented.
Never has it been more apparent that” we are the bad guys”. Every man for himself! Not in my backyard! Mexicans are killers and rapists! Haitians eat, family pets! Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator and invaded Russia! We have been” the ugly American” in a world of hopeful diplomacy for decades. We smile with our faces and steal with our hands.
The empire is coming to an end, our behavior as an EMPIRE post World War II has cemented or demise as an “EMPIRE “.
Donald Trump has both accelerated and pronounced that demise with a desperation for personal wealth and power never seen in modern history.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again..
“Maybe America needs to fall as an empire so that it can rise as a nation”.
“ To be a country that’s actual values mirror. It’s implied ones by simply abandoning. The selfish endgame are blind ambition has given us.”
As dreary as this all is…. When we wake up, we will find our people are way better than our leaders.
BillC says
Is Trump on crack or meth? He sure isn’t thinking straight and his sense of kingly power is delusional.
Sherry says
Hey Maga. . . so trump won’t touch Medicare, right?
This from Politico on March 4:
EXPECTING THE WORST’ — Mass firings across federal health agencies have racked workers who’ve held onto their jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency official who retired last week told Kelly.
Jeff Grant, the former deputy director for operations of the CMS division that oversees Obamacare and other programs, left Friday after a 41-year career in the federal government. He described an agency in wreckage after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency swept through HHS and fired thousands of workers it deemed unfit for the agency’s needs or inadequate to perform their job’s duties.
Shortly after his retirement became official Friday, Grant sent a fiery open letter to the HHS leader tasked with carrying out the firings, decrying the layoffs as unlawful and disputing the pink slips that 82 of his former employees — about 15 percent of his workforce — received a few weeks ago.
On Monday, Grant launched a consulting firm that will focus on finding new jobs for the fired CMS employees. Grant and other agency employees have said the Trump administration has been indiscriminate in its firings — cutting people who worked on initiatives that advance some of Trump’s policy priorities, like the surprise billing ban he signed into law in his first term.
joe says
I guess it’s time for me to reread 1984….
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html
Ed P says
Fear mongering and spreading misinformation about possible Medicare cuts has been used by the Democrats for decades. It’s like name calling and singing.
If you really want to help then use your crystal ball instead to give us a winning lottery number.
Is Resistance to common sense without a plan is the new play book?
How many wrong guesses, summations, theories or lies have to be debunked before the left says just once, “ we were wrong and Trump did something correct?”
Where is the lefts’ intellectual honesty?
Sherry says
@Joe . . . just be aware that if you are looking for Orwell’s (“amazing” sign of our current times) “1984” in the Flagler Beach library, last time I checked it was in the “Banned Book” section. Interesting that “1984” was REQUIRED reading in my Junior year of Ribault (public) High School in Jacksonville. The “Dumbing Down” of US citizens! My how times have changed!