The Patriot Post® · Not the Founders' Vision of Congress and the Presidency

With most — but not all — of the midterm dust having settled, Democrats have won at least 30 House seats and will take the speaker’s gavel when the new Congress convenes in January. Despite this, Republicans made important gains in the Senate — even if their seeming wins in Arizona and Florida are now in jeopardy of being overturned.

Oddly, the day after the election, there was little talk of the emerging Democrat majority in the House.

Instead, President Donald Trump hosted an epic 90-minute press conference in the White House, during which he fielded dozens of questions and engaged in presidential theater the likes of which few have seen. He even claimed a Republican victory in the midterms, thereby taking some of the wind out of Democrat sails.

Rarely has a political party ever won such an important electoral victory that felt more like a stinging defeat. But that’s the state of contemporary American politics, in which congressional elections are characterized by the media as referendums on the sitting president.

So much for the old adage that all politics is local. Politics today is a national affair, but why?

As Jay Cost writes at National Review, “The rise of mass communications and the growth of federal power during the 20th century created the mammoth executive office that now exists. The president draws the attention of the people toward him and away from Congress, the courts, and the states. So even though Congress remains at the center of constitutional government, it is the president who dominates public opinion. It is in this way that the president can influence Congress so enormously.”

Cost’s analysis has some merit, but it also misses some important points. For example, one of the reasons why the presidency draws so much attention is that Congress has abdicated its own authority to check the executive’s power.

Jim Fossel explains at The Press Herald said, “The president starts wars and signs international agreements on his own, and the opposition party grumbles, but rarely offers any serious oversight. Instead, they use their grumbling to motivate their base, then turn around and do the exact same thing once they get the Oval Office back in their hands.”

How convenient. Members of Congress no longer have the courage to fight for anything, but they then blame the president when things go awry. That’s how republics become dictatorships, but in this case the House and Senate are intentionally empowering the presidency.

Another factor, of course, is the media. Fossel adds, “This is reflected in the growing tendency of the press to report breathlessly on everything the current occupant of the Oval Office does on a day-to-day basis, even if it’s not particularly relevant to policy or governance. This has had a corrosive effect on our culture at large, as the country has become more divided with each administration, and everything — from sports to entertainment to technology — is viewed these days through a political lens. It’s thanks to the prevalence of the president in our socio-political lives that the country is increasingly split into two political tribes that value loyalty to their party (or, indeed, to one person) above all else.”

Sure, President Trump himself contributes to the political circus with his odd-hour Twitter barrages and banal press-conference controversies, but the media invariably takes the bait and gives him outsized attention while virtually ignoring Congress. Congressional candidates, too, could help out by not nationalizing their campaigns.

None of this is good for a constitutional republic, and our Founders didn’t envision this for our country. For two centuries, Congress asserted its authority to declare war, approve budgets, and serve as a check on the power of the presidency. In the last 50 years, however, Congress has established a pattern of deferring to the president on too many important matters.

As Paul Kane and Derek Willis at The Washington Post lament, the Congress of our Founders now “functions more as a junior partner to the executive, or doesn’t function at all when it comes to the country’s pressing priorities.” Sure, Congress has always been criticized for moving too slowly on legislation, but that’s what the Founders wanted in order to prevent the national government from becoming too powerful.

What the Founders did not want — in fact, greatly feared — is a Congress unwilling to perform its basic constitutional duties while bowing low to an imperial presidency.