It's Good to Be King

The invaluable John Hayward, being invaluable:

The disturbing political genius of Barack Obama was to realize that many of the limits on executive power are theoretical.  Separation of powers has become a gentleman’s agreement over the past century.  A spirited historical argument can be had over exactly when the process began in earnest, but the bottom line is that ambitious presidents realized the executive could use its power to expand its power, in a way the other branches of government can’t quite match.  Sure, you can point fingers at Supreme Court justices or members of Congress, left and right, who pushed the limits of their authority in various ways, but the executive is uniquely suited to do things like what Palin accurately accuses Obama of doing on the border: deploying the immense resources of the federal government to take actions that change the rules.

However we might chart the history of this degeneration – perhaps it was simply an inevitable result of the central government growing larger, producing a spreading mass of bureaucratic weeds beyond the reach of either legislative gardeners or the public – the bottom line is that Barack Obama realized there’s virtually nothing anyone can do to stop him, provided the media doesn’t turn against him and gin up massive public outrage.  Quite a few of the restrictions on power are now effectively enforced by the media, which is is very strongly partisan, and also favorably disposed toward increasing the size of government.  The same people who went nuts over everything George Bush did are utterly complacent, or even actively supportive, when Obama does the same thing but ten times worse.

Emphasis in original. Hayward is discussing the quixotic call from Sarah Palin for impeachment for the Leader of the Free World, but his larger point is more important. Everyone, including Sarah Palin, knows that any attempt to impeach Barack Obama is a nonstarter. We have at least a half dozen political scandals going on at the moment and not one of them will bring Obama down. You can't, because the executive branch has an overwhelming amount of resources available to reward friends and punish enemies. A great deal of law enforcement is done through regulation, not statute, and as long as the agencies are on board, a president can do damn well whatever he pleases. There's a reason that Obama is willing to spend his time shooting pool with John Hickenlooper and fundraising, all while pointedly refusing to join Texas politicians from both sides of the aisle when they ask him to visit the border; he'll pay no real political price for it. Back to Hayward:

There’s always the danger that a serious impeachment threat would rally disaffected Democrats around a President with cellar-dwelling approval ratings, with perhaps enough spare energy to influence some congressional races.  This is, again, a political consideration, not a structural argument… but the structure is inert without political force to animate it.

Which is not a bad way to sum up the problem with living in a post-Constitutional non-Republic: there aren’t many abstract limits on power, and the public is generally comfortable with that.  They’re getting more into this idea of an “elective monarchy,” which is just a way of putting a charismatic human face on the sort of majority mob rule the Founders were terrified of.  The average person interprets this system as “Whatever the majority supports, the government is empowered to do,” but a more accurate rendition would be “the government can do anything it wants, unless a substantial majority says no.”  Both of those creeds are a horrible way to run a Republic, but there’s a world of difference between them, and the latter is much worse.

Again, emphasis in original. Dick Cheney claimed that his boss had enormous power over the government when he promulgated the notion of a "unitary executive."  Cheney was mostly talking about foreign policy and warmaking in particular, but if the president has such powers in that arena, it's difficult to imagine that he wouldn't be able to effectively extend similar powers in domestic matters. That's what's going on here. There was a time when liberals denounced this sort of thinking. Not any more.