How a president becomes king

President Donald Trump is expanding the power of the presidency in every way he can. From his flagrant disregard of court rulings to signing an executive order banning flag burning in defiance of Supreme Court precedent, this president has shown little respect for the institutional norms our government runs on. Trump doesn’t just test the limits of presidential power — he denies they exist. 

We may see this president as outrageous and power-hungry. Though he is shocking, he is by no means one of a kind. For 50 years, the office of the presidency has been swelling beyond its constitutional bounds. What Trump represents is not the beginning of this story, but the breaking point — the moment we must decide if we want a president, or whether we are content to crown a king.

To understand how we got here, we have to look back. For almost a century, presidents from both parties chipped away at limits on their power, each pushing a little further than the last. While the expansion of presidential power may have started with former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, former President Richard Nixon is the first modern example. 

Nixon’s presidency was consumed by scandal, but what made Watergate so dangerous was the mindset behind it. He abused federal agencies for political ends, ordered illegal surveillance and even directed the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office after the Pentagon Papers leak. His infamous line — “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal” — revealed his belief that the office placed him beyond the law. He resigned under pressure, but the real lesson was that presidents could test boundaries until caught.

Former President George W. Bush expanded presidential power on a massive scale after 9/11, claiming sweeping commander-in-chief authority: warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention and John Yoo’s torture memos. He also issued more than 700 signing statements, often declaring laws unconstitutional — even signaling that anti-torture provisions would not bind him. The presidency was beginning to treat congressional authority as optional.

Former President Barack Obama promised balance but, facing gridlock, relied on unilateral tools: sweeping orders on immigration, drone strikes — even against U.S. citizens — and military action in Libya without congressional approval. He entrenched the imperial presidency as the normal way of governing.

By the time Trump arrived, the groundwork had been laid. What had once been Nixon’s arrogance and Bush’s precedent had become the bipartisan status quo. Trump simply inherited an office already swollen beyond its bounds — and decided to push it further than anyone dared.

This drift has a name: the unitary executive theory. It argues that Article II gives the president absolute control of the executive branch. Justice Antonin Scalia made the case in Morrison v. Olson. Under Bush, Yoo’s memos brought the theory into practice, justifying surveillance, detention and torture. What began as an esoteric idea has since been embraced by presidents of both parties. In Trump’s hands, it is no longer a theory at all, but a weapon for personal power.

The idea first gained traction in conservative legal circles. In Morrison v. Olson, Scalia argued for complete presidential control. Under Bush, Yoo’s memos claimed virtually unlimited wartime powers — justifying surveillance, detention and torture.

What began as an esoteric legal argument has, across decades, been adopted by presidents of both parties. And in Trump’s hands, the unitary executive is no longer a theory at all. It is a weapon for personal power.

Trump is the culmination of this long drift toward executive supremacy, but his version is more brazen than anything that came before. Where past presidents cloaked their actions in legalese or national security jargon, Trump dispenses with justification entirely. He refused to comply with congressional subpoenas during his first impeachment, instructing top officials not to testify. He attacked judges who ruled against him, deriding them as “so-called judges” and undermining trust in the courts. And he demanded personal loyalty from the Justice Department, reportedly pressuring prosecutors to shield his allies and pursue his rivals. He treats federal agencies as extensions of his will — purging inspectors general, pressuring the military to serve his political ends and using executive orders as blunt political weapons. He also used his pardon power to protect allies convicted of crimes tied to him, turning a constitutional safeguard into a tool of personal loyalty. Most dangerously, reporting from The New York Times revealed that he authorized an extremely risky Navy SEAL mission inside North Korea without notifying Congress — a decision that could have triggered war overnight. Few actions better capture his disregard for constitutional checks on military power than this.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that presidents enjoy “absolute immunity” for their official acts — a decision that elevates the office beyond the reach of law. Trump did not hand down that ruling, but his nominations helped shape the Court that delivered it. Combined with his own defiance — like issuing a flag-burning ban against settled precedent — the effect is unmistakable.

Even symbolically, Trump stands apart. Nixon hid his abuses, Bush justified them as wartime necessity and Obama framed them as gridlock’s last resort. Trump revels in defiance — bragging about power, demanding loyalty and using constitutional theory as a shield for himself.

This is what makes Trump different. He did not invent the imperial presidency, but he is the first to embrace it as a political identity. In his hands, the unitary executive is no longer about policy or efficiency. It is about one man’s claim to stand outside the reach of law itself.

The Constitution was written on a simple premise: Power must be checked by power. Founding Father James Madison put it plainly in Federalist No. 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Congress was meant to guard its legislative turf, the courts to enforce the limits of law, the executive to carry out its duties within bounds. The system only works if each branch jealously defends its authority.

But when Congress abdicates oversight, when courts are undermined or ignored, nothing remains to contain the presidency. The result is not a coequal branch of government but something closer to an elected monarchy — a single figure elevated above the law, governing by will rather than by rule.

The consequences are not abstract. Agencies lose independence and become tools of political loyalty. Courts lose legitimacy when presidents treat their rulings as suggestions. Citizens lose faith when laws apply differently to the powerful than to everyone else. Democracy erodes not with a single coup, but with the slow normalization of unaccountable power.

The United States has long prided itself on being a nation of laws, not of men. But that principle survives only if limits are enforced. Without them, elections decide not who will govern under the law, but who will temporarily replace it.

Defenders of the modern presidency argue that these powers are not luxuries but necessities. The world moves too quickly, they say, for a deliberative Congress to respond. Crises like terrorism, pandemics or climate disasters demand decisive action. Alexander Hamilton himself praised “energy in the executive” in Federalist No. 70 as a safeguard for national security. More recently, conservative legal thinkers and Trump allies — from former Attorney General William Barr to members of the Federalist Society — have defended sweeping views of executive power, arguing that the president must act decisively without waiting for congressional approval.

But energy is not the same as impunity. Swift action does not require absolute power, and decisive leadership can still be held accountable. The framers never imagined a presidency freed from oversight; they imagined a system where urgency was balanced by constraint. Strip away those constraints, and energy in the executive becomes something else entirely: tyranny in slow motion.

The imperial presidency did not begin with Trump, but it may well end with him — either because we finally draw a line, or because we allow the line to disappear entirely. The past 50 years have shown a steady accumulation of executive power, justified in the name of national security or political necessity. Trump strips away the pretense. He makes explicit what his predecessors left implicit: that the presidency is not bound by law.

Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over war powers, oversight and the budget before another reckless military decision like the North Korea mission or another round of stonewalled subpoenas reduces it to irrelevance. Courts must reject blanket immunity and reaffirm that no one, not even the president, is above the law. And citizens themselves must stop treating presidents as personal champions and demand they serve as constitutional officers.

The American experiment depends on these limits. What began as a theory of efficiency has curdled into a philosophy of impunity. Trump is shocking, but he is not sui generis — he is the inevitable result of a system that has stopped enforcing its own rules. The question before us is simple: Do we still want a president, or are we prepared to crown a king?

Seth Gabrielson is an opinion columnist who writes about the intersection of politics, science and philosophy in his biweekly column Public Reason. He can be reached at semiel@umich.edu.

The post How a president becomes king appeared first on The Michigan Daily.