Every four years we elect an Emperor. Oh, wait, I mean a President.

Lots of people have fears about where our country is headed. Some fear we are headed toward socialism, others fear that we are headed away from the Constitution, and others fear we are headed toward an oligarchy of the rich. Some fear all of them at once.

My fear is different than all that. It seems to me that in 200+ years of our countries history we have seen the steady advance of an imperial Presidency. The founding fathers designed a government that was largely ruled by Congress and they intentionally limited the role of the Presidency out of fear of a monarchy. In fact, it almost seems like they created a political structure to be intentionally log-jammed and unable to do much (my personal opinion is they did that on purpose to keep government out of our lives). But over time, the limitations on the President have eroded or even been ignored. Executive powers continue to grow, and every President (both Democrat and Republican) have expanded those powers. Granted, the different political philosophies have pushed the expansion in different ways, but both have expanded the powers in ways that concern me.

It almost feels like someday we will have an Emperor just as the Roman empire adopted. In Rome, what started as a republic led by the Senate (an advanced and progressive concept in its day) became a government led by Julius Caesar, Augustine, and a long list of other Roman emperors. The Senate became an afterthought to either rubber stamp the decisions of the Emperor or to simply be ignored. Historians even separate the long reign of Rome into the Republic era and the Imperial era. And the split essentially came when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and imposed his power.

What strikes me is that people longed for somebody to fill this role. People clamored for Julius Caesar to do this, and most of the army rallied around him. There were certainly civil wars, but these wars were not so much to save the republic as to determine who would be Emperor.

You might laugh and scoff at this fear of mine. Fair enough. But to be clear, I’m not worried about this happening anytime soon. The truth is that most Roman citizens considered the Senate to be the real power during Caesar’s reign, and Augustine carefully perpetuated the image of himself as just one more Senator among many (doing so as he used shrewdness and raw political power to rule the Roman empire). From a public perception, the transition from a Roman government run by the Senate to an empire run by an Emperor took nearly 100 years. But each crisis, each civil war, each foreign threat, each economic meltdown … all led to a centralization of power in one branch of the government as people shouted for “action” and strength of leadership. Sound familiar?

Which leads me to this book. Bomb Power by Garry Wills is a book that I don’t really want to like. He clearly has his political agenda, and he has contempt for the viewpoints and actions of certain political figures. This is not an unbiased book.

But, he’s got a point worth contemplating. For Wills, the American version of Caesar crossing the Rubicon was the development and use of the Atom Bomb. The Presidency changed at that point because suddenly he had his finger on the nuclear button. Everything the President did could be classified as a national security issue, meaning virtually everything could be classified as secret and every action seen as the Presidents prerogative. Executive power exceeded Constitutional intent long before the atom bomb (going back as far as Jefferson approving the Louisiana Purchase without consulting Congress), but it has grown dramatically since 1945. It started with the bomb, grew into all aspects of the military, expanded to covert operations around the world, and has worked its way into virtually every department of the government.

Wills makes some excellent points in his book. I don’t agree with everything, of course, but I can’t ignore the core message of the book: bomb power has given the Presidency massive power unparalleled in history and beyond the wildest fears of our founding fathers. The atom bomb has become the modern day crossing of the Rubicon.

I’d like to know what you think. Specifically, I’d like to know what my conservative friends think because they more frequently seem the ones who argue in favor of such Presidential power. It seems to me that both political parties have embraced this, but the Republican party in particular has pursued it and legislated for it. Isn’t that inconsistent with a call to get back to a Constitutional form of government? Hasn’t history taught us that the concentration of power in one persons hands has never turned out well for the people?

Not trying to be argumentative here, I’m just genuinely curious how this can be justified.

Thoughts?