The Silver Lining

Biden might be the last "unitary executive".

Believe it or not, there might be a silver lining to the Biden presidency.

That treasure might well be that it terminates the trend toward the “try and stop me and even if you eventually do, it will be too late” executive governance by fiat that began decades ago.

There is a name for it – the term for it is the “unitary executive” - a doctrine that favors nearly unlimited executive power.

This idea more or less began, as many modern anti-constitutional Democrat ideas did, with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson's perspective of the presidency was that it only as big as the man holding it.

While Democrats attacked George W. Bush for attempting to become the "unitary executive" or inhabiting an "imperial" presidency, Barack Obama was the first modern president to adopt the Wilsonian idea that the power of the presidency was unconstrained by the Constitution or any other branch of the government.

Perhaps Obama was not the first president to knowingly push the limits of our system of checks and balances, but he is certainly the first to publicly acknowledge he was going to do it and challenge people to stop him.

And as did the Obama administrations, the Biden people see themselves as lawless and unfettered, following the Wilsonian era idea that a president is free “…to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution, – it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because the President has the nation behind him, and the Congress has not.”

Wilson continued that line of thought with:

“The old theory of the sovereignty of the States, which used so to engage our passions, has lost its vitality. The war between the States established at least this principle, that the federal government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own powers…”

Where Obama was able to sell his brand of tyranny by making it appear to be for the good of the people, Biden (and the hacks in his administration) lacks the requisite sales skills to pull this off – they come off as authoritarian brutes, determined to enforce their will without listening to the people.

Their arrogant incompetence is only matched by their lust for power.

Think about Biden’s OSHA vaccine mandate. He and his administration openly mused it was unconstitutional, with Chef of Staff Ron Klain noting it was a perfect “work-around” the Constitution. They knew it was unconstitutional but did it anyway because 1) it achieved their goal and 2) given the speed of the court system, they knew it was likely companies would comply on their own before the edict could reach the Supreme Court.

Their reasoning was that constitutionality didn’t matter because by the time it could be knocked down, the deed would already be done. People would either acquiesce to inoculations they opposed or be forced from their jobs.

Biden’s insulting “voting rights” speech was a perfect example of the ham-fisted, arrogant approach of this administration. “We know what is good for you and you will like it” is the message – and they are not above lying to get that message across.

Because their message depends upon lies.

Lying is the only way to claim ownership of everything except the results or to claim that you can’t believe your own lying eyes that their economic policies are causing inflation, the pandemic responses are responsible for the supply chain issues, that their authoritarianism isn’t really authoritarianism and that you are a racist if you think the same level of identification should be required to vote as it is to buy beer, cigarettes or Actifed.

These lies cannot stand.

And these lies will be what breaks the Wilsonian model of the unitary executive – and perhaps the Democrat Party as well.

Sooner or later, in this case much later, the will of the people will be expressed.

Shakespeare wrote that truth will out - and it will.