If you prefer to listen, click here for the spoken edition. If you prefer to read, the dispatch continues below.
Americans spend a great deal of time debating whether the constitutional guardrails still exist.
The discussion has become familiar. One side argues that the presidency has become too powerful. The other insists that the Constitution remains intact and that the alarm is overblown. Experts debate court rulings. Commentators dissect executive orders. Politicians assure the public that the system is functioning exactly as intended.
The debate is not without merit. Under Trump, the expansion of presidential power has become not merely more extensive but more explicit. Claims once advanced cautiously are now asserted openly. Authorities that were once exercised quietly are increasingly defended as entitlements. Restraints once regarded as customary are dismissed as optional.
Congress has often shown little appetite for defending its institutional authority. Independent agencies face growing pressure to align themselves with presidential preferences. Civil-service protections are increasingly treated as obstacles rather than safeguards. Meanwhile, the courts have frequently expanded executive discretion while declining to resolve disputes until after the facts on the ground have already changed.
While these developments deserve scrutiny, they may not be the most important part of the story.
The Constitution still contains mechanisms for limiting power. Congress still possesses oversight authority. It still controls appropriations. It still possesses investigative powers. It still retains the extraordinary authority of impeachment.
Courts still possess the power of judicial review.
States retain significant powers of their own.
Citizens retain the right to organize, petition, criticize, and ultimately vote.
The tools remain.
The more troubling question may be whether anyone has the guts to use them.
This is where discussions about presidential power often become strangely detached from reality. Americans frequently speak as though institutions operate automatically, as though constitutional safeguards function like the emergency brakes on a train. That, when danger appears, the machinery engages on its own. The republic corrects itself.
History offers little support for such comforting assumptions.
Institutions do not act. People act.
A congressional committee does not decide to investigate misconduct. Members of Congress decide to investigate misconduct, in the committee’s name.
A court does not suddenly defend constitutional principles. Judges choose to defend constitutional principles.
An agency does not preserve its independence through some mysterious bureaucratic force. Public servants choose whether to uphold their responsibilities or surrender them.
The Constitution supplies authority. Human beings decide whether to exercise it.
That distinction matters because many of the limitations traditionally imposed upon presidential power have not disappeared. They have simply weakened.
Norms and customs, once regarded as essential guardrails, have increasingly been treated as optional. Independent agencies face pressures that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago. The professional civil service has become the target of efforts designed to replace institutional loyalty with personal loyalty. Congress often appears more concerned with partisan advantage than institutional responsibility. The Supreme Court, while still exercising significant authority, has frequently expanded executive discretion while declining to resolve disputes until long after the practical consequences have taken effect.
The result is not the disappearance of constitutional restraints.
It is their erosion.
And erosion presents a unique danger.
Collapse is obvious. Erosion is gradual.
A bridge that collapses attracts immediate attention. A bridge that weakens year after year often attracts none until the day it can no longer bear the weight placed upon it.
So, it is with constitutional government.
The temptation is to conclude that if traditional restraints have weakened, then no restraints remain.
That conclusion would be as mistaken as the belief that institutions function automatically.
The remaining limits on presidential power have not disappeared.
They have become more personal.
Across government, individual judges continue issuing rulings that presidents would prefer not to receive. Individual journalists continue reporting facts that powerful people would rather conceal. Individual civil servants continue following statutes rather than personalities. Individual state officials continue asserting authorities that the federal government would prefer they surrender.
These people rarely appear in grand historical narratives.
Most will never have monuments erected in their honor.
Many are merely doing their jobs.
Yet it is often their willingness to perform those jobs faithfully that prevents constitutional erosion from becoming constitutional collapse.
This reality is both reassuring and troubling.
It is reassuring because it demonstrates that democratic institutions retain life.
It is troubling because it reveals how dependent those institutions are upon the character of individuals.
The Constitution cannot compel courage.
A statute cannot manufacture integrity.
An oath cannot guarantee fidelity.
Every generation eventually discovers that constitutional government depends less upon parchment than upon the people entrusted to uphold it.
This is not a new lesson.
The Founders understood it perfectly.
They designed a system of checks and balances not because they trusted human beings, but because they did not.
They assumed that institutions would defend their own powers and prerogatives.
They assumed that those entrusted with public responsibilities would possess at least enough self-respect to exercise them.
What they did not anticipate was a political culture in which so many officeholders would voluntarily surrender powers already in their possession.
Congress provides the most obvious example.
Members routinely complain about executive overreach. They lament the growth of presidential authority. They express concern about the erosion of constitutional norms.
Yet Congress retains powers that legislators in most democracies would envy.
It controls appropriations.
It possesses investigative authority.
It can compel testimony.
It can enact legislation.
It can refuse confirmation.
It can conduct oversight.
And, in extraordinary circumstances, it can impeach.
These powers were not repealed. They were not struck from the Constitution. They remain precisely where they have always been.
The question is whether anyone intends to use them.
No.
The more troubling question is whether anyone will use them.
The danger is rarely that citizens wake one morning to discover that every safeguard has vanished. The greater danger is that each safeguard becomes slightly weaker while everyone assumes someone else will repair it.
Again, the temptation is to conclude that if traditional restraints have weakened, then no restraints remain.
That conclusion would be as mistaken as the belief that institutions function automatically.
The remaining limits on presidential power have not disappeared. They have become more personal.
There is a tendency in modern politics to confuse restraint with helplessness.
They are not the same thing.
An institution that lacks authority is helpless.
An institution that possesses authority but refuses to exercise it is making a choice.
That distinction matters.
Much of the contemporary discussion surrounding presidential power proceeds as though Congress, the courts, and other institutions are passive observers watching events unfold beyond their control. They are often described as victims of circumstance, overwhelmed by forces too large to resist.
Yet the Constitution did not assign Congress the role of spectator.
It assigned Congress the role of participant.
Indeed, the legislative branch was intended to be the first branch of government, the branch closest to the people and most responsive to their concerns. It was granted substantial powers precisely because the Founders feared the concentration of authority in any single individual.
Those powers remain.
The question is not whether Congress can investigate.
It can.
The question is not whether Congress can conduct oversight.
It can.
The question is not whether Congress can limit executive authority through legislation.
It can.
The question is not whether Congress can impeach.
It can.
The more troubling question is whether anyone has the guts to use them.
That may sound harsh.
It is intended to.
For several years, Americans have been encouraged to believe that constitutional government depends primarily upon documents, procedures, and institutions. These things matter enormously. They form the framework of the republic.
But frameworks do not defend themselves.
Sooner or later, every constitutional system arrives at the same point.
Someone must decide whether to act.
Someone must decide whether preserving an institution is more important than preserving a political advantage.
Someone must decide whether loyalty belongs to a person or to a principle.
Someone must decide whether an oath was merely a ceremonial exercise or a genuine obligation.
At that moment, constitutional questions become questions of character.
The Founders understood this better than many of their modern admirers.
They spent considerable time discussing structures and procedures. They spent even more time discussing virtue, responsibility, and civic duty. They understood that no constitutional design could survive indefinitely if those entrusted with its operation lacked the courage to perform their responsibilities.
A republic cannot be maintained by people perpetually waiting for someone else to save it.
Eventually, someone must step forward and accept responsibility for the tools already placed in their hands.
This is why debates about presidential power sometimes miss the central issue: Power naturally expands.
It always has.
Every institution seeks additional authority. Every executive seeks greater discretion. Every political leader eventually encounters the temptation to test the boundaries of the office he occupies.
This is neither new nor uniquely American.
The question is not whether power seeks expansion.
The question is whether anyone remains willing to limit it.
That responsibility does not belong exclusively to Congress.
It belongs to judges.
It belongs to governors.
It belongs to journalists.
It belongs to civil servants.
It belongs to civic organizations.
Ultimately, it belongs to the citizens themselves.
For generations, Americans have taken comfort in the belief that the Constitution protects the republic.
In truth, the Constitution provides the tools by which the republic may be protected.
There is a difference.
A toolbox cannot repair a bridge.
A toolbox cannot repair a burst pipe.
A toolbox cannot defend a democracy.
Someone must decide to pick up the tools and use them.
The same is true of constitutional government.
The Framers gave future generations a remarkable collection of mechanisms designed to restrain power. They provided oversight, elections, federalism, judicial review, impeachment, and the separation of powers.
What they could not provide was courage.
The responsibility to provide that courage belongs to every generation anew.
Americans often ask whether the constitutional guardrails still exist.
Many do.
Others have weakened substantially.
Some have been ignored.
A few have been voluntarily surrendered.
Yet the central question remains unchanged.
The issue is no longer whether the tools exist.
They do.
The issue is whether those holding them have the guts to use them.
The Constitution cannot answer that question.
Only we can.
— Dunneagin
📬 To receive each new essay by email the day it publishes, subscribe to Civics Unhinged.
☕ Reader editions and collected volumes—including Volumes 1, 2, 3, and The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy—are available on the Fourthwall bookshelf.
If this week’s dispatch aligned with your reading, forward it to an un-unhinged colleague who still keeps an eye on the clockwork.
Reader and listener correspondence is always welcome at dunneagin@dunneagin.net. Questions, observations, or a note on how you first stumbled into the chronicle are particularly appreciated.
A note on the shelf: Every Tuesday dispatch compiles toward a permanent, physical record. We print what the screen forgets.