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When Alexander Hamilton wrote his classic analysis of the presidency in The Federalist Papers (No. 70), he minced no words: “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” The executive branch has to act and act decisively. The legislative process is not designed for speed, nor is adjudication in the courts. The presidency is—and needs to be. As commander in chief, the president has to be ready to address whatever crisis the nation faces.
The alternative to an energetic executive, Hamilton explained, is a “feeble” executive. A feeble executive will act feebly. And “feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution: And a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be in practice a bad government.”
The designers of the Constitution could not, of course, know who would occupy the office in the future. What they could do was design the Constitution so as to give future presidents the ability to act decisively and energetically.
That is why, Hamilton explained, there is one president, not two and not a council. When multiple people have to agree on any particular action, there’s always the possibility for delay or even gridlock. Checks and balances are, indeed, important in the right context. But checks and balances on military strategy when the battle is underway can be fatal. So “[t]he executive power”—not some, but the entirety—is “vested” in the president by Article II of the Constitution.
As Hamilton explained, decisiveness and promptness “will generally characterise the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number.” So having a single, unitary executive who has the final decision-making power is a key feature of the Constitution’s design for the presidency. President Harry Truman captured the point succinctly with the sign he placed on his desk: “The buck stops here.”
-- Lael Weinberger
Many Republicans pride themselves on their chess-playing acumen. Dems write a tax increase bill, GOP players write one that doesn't increase taxes, and say, "We'll just checkmate these revolutionaries and WIN this one." Sometimes they do. But Since the Goldwater days, they've been whipped 90 percent of the time. So they study chess tactics harder.
In next three years, the Dems are rolling out an army of tanks. First mission: roll over every chess board and destroy them, leaving the elephants to wander around aimlessly, not knowing how to do politics.
How do we know this? Zoom calls over the last year. The Dems are done with chess.
Kunstler: "Democratic Party election ninja Marc Elias knocked himself out for two years registering new voters by the bale, as in manufacturing them. . . illegal aliens. . . homeless junkies. . . straight-up fictitious persons. . . in order to flood the zone with fake mail-in ballots, that is, in-your-face fraud. And the reason they did it was so ...
"No man is big enough to run this great Republic. There never has been one. Such domination was never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability—all are assured in party sponsorship. and we mean to renew the assurances which were rended in the cataclysmal war.”
Warren Harding, July 1920.
