For years now I have held that the genius of our founding Framers embraced the clear-eyed acceptance of the frailties of human nature and its persistence. They determined, therefore, the necessity to engineer a Constitutional structure that could distribute the pressures of power in such a manner as to counterpose any serious imbalance of load, and so maintain coherent integrity of design.
Amongst the frailties they recognized, ambition ranked highest. “[T]he love of power. Men love power.” And among dangerous pressures they hoped to control was from an Executive (President) who “would be ambitious. . .[A]s the object of his ambition would be to prolong his power, it is probable that in case of a war, he would avail himself of the emergency, to evade or refuse a degradation from his place.”[1] (“de-grada-tion” meaning literally stepping down)
Today, several critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the wars on Hamas and Hezbollah cite precisely that motivation. So long as he keeps his power, he evades prosecution. In our country of USAmerica, we have the prospect of shocking similarity.
An additional point made by Hamilton during that speech touched on the Executive who “would be ambitious, with the means of making creatures. . .” This is political talk—among deeply experienced politicians—for installing yes-men into subordinate positions of power to do his bidding. Coupled with thoughts “in case of war,” prudence cannot ignore the serious, structurally essential role assigned to Senators by the “advise and consent” clause for certain nominations.
The bravado-mask of toxic masculinity ill becomes the senior civilian to lead the Department of Defense (once, but no longer, styled the Department of War). All the more so when that mask has been sprayed with graffiti alleging sexual assault. Nor can the judgement of one nominated for Directorship of National Intelligence be unclouded, that accepts at face value as reportable intelligence material published by Russian state operatives.
Frightening as public health scenarios may be, that flash before us with the mad fantasies of a sur-named Wizard and a prominent family’s black sheep and other like-minded professionals, their lethal impact will fall on us only individually as we sicken and die. But such recklessness in the arena of war and peace, intelligence and propaganda, can be lethal to the country and everything we hold, however illusorily, dear. Yes, it can happen here. It has happened everywhere where once democracy was tried. But it need not—not yet, not now.
Human beings are the only elements of society with free will to choose to act for good or ill. It is not the institutions of this country that will decide the question, “whether societies . . . are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” It lies with the individuals of the People chosen by the People to act for the People to choose to uphold their sacred oath of office—without fear or favor—to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States by decisions that advance not diminish the aggregate good of the community as a whole. The means of defense were built into the structure of the Constitution precisely by such institutional mechanisms as requiring independent approval by the Senate for certain decisions taken by the President, decisions deemed too far-reaching and important to be left untested to one person.
[1] These are two of several points made about ambition in the course of a single speech by Alexander Hamilton, June 18, 1787, during the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention.
The Long Clasp 