“People are promoted to their level of incompetence” – The Peter Principle. 

The same holds, so it appears, for the President of the United States.

I’m speaking of the office, not the occupant, although obviously, we have had our fair share of incompetent occupants.

Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review notes that Biden “Will Regret Playing Savior.”  I wrote a post here back in March on the Imperial Presidency.

Ryan, over at Living With Liberty, has some great comments on the Biden administration inserting itself into our current supply chain issues.  Government incompetence created these shipping issues (at least in significant part), government incompetence is now going to make it worse.  Ryan notes, with palpable satisfaction, that the duration and severity of the supply chain issues may wake many voters up to the consequences of government incompetence.  I hope he’s right.

Aside from military matters, foreign relations, and the enforcement of laws passed by Congress, the presidency was never intended to be particularly important, much less as powerful as it is currently (see Article 2, United States Constitution).  This was a sound design, one that needs to be restored.

Government incompetence would not be particularly important were it not for government power.  It would matter little that government is incompetent to control markets (for example) if the government had no power to inflict its incompetence on those markets.

And this is the issue with the Imperial Presidency.  The fact is, the president has very little power to fix things like the supply chain, or the economy, or a pandemic.  Keyword – fix.  But the president does have significant power to do damage.

Both of our major political parties seem to have accepted the Imperial Presidency as a positive good, provided of course it is “their” candidate holding the office.  How’s that working out?  “Your guy” gets into office and promptly signs a flurry of executive orders – to the delight of supporters, which are promptly undone by the next occupant.  Next, “your guy” gets little or nothing through congress.  Next, each side blames the other for the failures, majorities change, and we start the cycle all over again.

But this strikes no one, least of all the corporate media, as stunningly ridiculous as it is.  The media has long ago quit holding politicians to account – I say that without exception.  The corporate media is clearly biased to the left, but even at that, they do not hold Republicans to account, they simply launch baseless attacks on them.

In a sane world, it would be the job of the media to point out that the president does not have the power or the wisdom to fix something like our supply chain issues, but does have the (demonstrated) power to screw things up.  But the media have proven they are not up to the task, they won’t do it.

We the people, as individuals, are going to have to hold the politicians and the media to account.  Recent commentators have said the old saying “All politics is local” is dead, now all politics is national.  You might be excused for believing that if you believe everything the corporate media says.  But Tom over at The Real Tommy C is fond of saying “The power is local” – he’s right.

Our task is to hold our representative in congress to account.  Let them know it is not acceptable for them to delegate legislative authority to the president, it is not acceptable for them to allow the president to exceed the authority granted under Article 2.  Call the media out for spreading misinformation in whatever modest way you can (Did anyone notice the massive backlash in the media when Biden and Pelosi said the $3.5 trillion spending bill would cost $0?  Didn’t think so.)

Bounce everything said by every and any presidential candidate off Article 2.  If you don’t find it in Article 2, you know it’s bullshit.

I know there are millions of people that love Trump just as there were millions that loved Obama, Clinton, Reagan, etc.  Fine.  But we the people need to get over this obsession with the Imperial Presidency no matter who the occupant is – because the occupant WILL CHANGE by law.  Enabling this is enabling incompetent government to do us damage.

This author would like to graciously thank the current administration for graphically and conclusively proving every point made here, and every point made by every author referenced herein.

Gadsden1