Overreach: The Role of Executive Power

We explore the inaugural addresses of Cleveland, Coolidge, FDR, Reagan and more recent presidents to understand the role of executive power.  

Transcript

Overreach: All We Want is Good Government

February 2025

Resisting overreaching by the federal government is appropriate and, yes, even patriotic.

Former WI Progressive and Senator Russ Feingold

Mandates are rarely won on election night. They are earned after Inauguration Day by leaders who spend their political capital wisely, taking advantage of events without overreaching.

Ron Fournier

Government overreach can take many forms, each presenting unique challenges and implications for citizens and businesses. One typical example is regulatory overreach, where government agencies enact rules and regulations that exceed their statutory authority or impose undue burdens on individuals and companies. This can stifle innovation, deter entrepreneurship, and hinder economic growth by creating unnecessary barriers to entry or compliance. Others can include cultural overreach, as we have seen both with the trans movement and Christian nationalism.  Another dimension of government overreach involves infringements on civil liberties and privacy rights. In an era increasingly defined by digital surveillance and data collection, concerns over governmental intrusion into private lives have become particularly acute. Issues such as warrantless surveillance, data mining, and the erosion of Fourth Amendment protections underscore the delicate balance between security and individual freedoms in the digital age.

What we see today is not the usual concept of overreach in terms of ever-growing governmental power, though there is an aspect of that.  Instead, the belief system of elected officials, particularly recent presidents, conflates simple elections with the ability to do whatever they want.  Not content with merely governing well, every election presages a revolution, a new dawn, a break with the past, or whatever cliches are necessary to explain their blatant use of naked power.  In all these cases, the simple act of governing well is sacrificed for broader aims, whether to reform an entire healthcare system, save the planet from destruction, or hearken the nation back to a time of isolation and manufacturing preeminence.  The horrific end result is not just lousy governance, but also the failure to achieve the stated aims because they are too complicated.  

What do we want from the government?  Is that not the big question going back to when some early human tribe was roaming Africa and thinking, “Our chief is a jerk and has no idea what he is doing.”  Back then, things were simple.  You wanted a leader to be able find food, not steal other guys women, and be strong enough to fight off wolves or other tribespeople.  

Things are a bit more complicated today.  

I will share. I want a government to protect my life and liberty and provide a path to happiness. Given my reputation for brilliance, you might think those are my own words, but in full disclosure, they were written by some Virginian a few years ago.  

But what does this mean?  A fearsome army and a solid police force.  It means I can drive a car (one of my own choosing) down a decent road.  It means my drinking water is not the same color as my English Breakfast tea, and it means I can start a business and express my views without A) getting shut down and B) my going to jail – at the command of the government.  

I am a Reaganite who believes in limited government, American exceptionalism, and personal responsibility, but I am not an anarchist.  Note my comments about the police and roads.  What I do not need is for government to tell me how much water I can use, whether I can use a gas stove, or that my daughter has to share a bathroom with a dude.  I especially do not need the government to tell me how to think, feel, or emote (looking at you, NPR).  

This podcast could go too long if I made a comprehensive list, but my point is that the government should be good at what we all expect it to do (secure borders, build roads, and lower crime) before venturing into things they cannot do.  Unfortunately, we have a 130-year pattern of moving from the former to the latter.  And given other, newer factors, including increasing presidential media exposure, accrual of power to the executive while seeing Congress turn into a ginormous YouTube video fundraising club, and America’s leadership role in the world, overreach on the part of presidents was inevitable.  

To see this evolution, we shall look at the attitudes of several presidents expressed in their inaugural addresses before their terms.  

From Grover Cleveland’s 1893 Inaugural Address:

“The pledge I now give before God and these witnesses of unreserved and complete devotion to the interests and welfare of those who have honored me.”

His policies were revolutionary and scintillating:

Manifestly, nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency.

Go, Grover! That’ll fire them up!

However, the core of Cleveland’s point was the limit of government power.  

“Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country’s greatness, which tends to a disregard for the rules of national safety, another danger that is not less serious confronts us. I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of the Government, especially direct individual advantages. The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned, and the better lesson taught is that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.

However, I am saved from discouragement when I remember that I shall have the support, counsel, and cooperation of wise and patriotic men who will stand at my side in Cabinet places or represent the people in their legislative halls.”

A few presidents later, Woodrow Wilson attempted arguably the largest overreach of all, the abrogation of the Constitution with its pesky limitations on executive power.  However, Wilson still had a limited capacity for overreach.  In the 1920s, after Wilson left office, the concept of limited government seemed to assert itself again.   

Calvin Coolidge – 1925

“The people declared that they wanted their rights to have not a political but a judicial determination, and their independence and freedom continued and supported by having the ownership and control of their property, not in the Government, but in their own hands. As they always do when they have a fair chance, the people demonstrated that they are sound and are determined to have a sound government.”

“The resources of this country are almost beyond computation. No mind can comprehend them. But the cost of our combined governments is likewise almost beyond definition. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute… They ought not to be burdened with a great array of public employees.” 

And we shall jump ahead to our era, or at least for a president to whom I first recognized if still too young to vote – Ronald Reagan

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time, we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule and that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

As noted, we shall hear from Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.  But it was Bill Clinton, elected 33 years ago, who truly set the tone for the continuous trend of presidential overreach: 

“And so today, we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift; a new season of American renewal has begun. To renew America, we must be bold. We must do what no generation has had to do before. But it can be done and done fairly, not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for our own sake. We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for its children.

Children?  

“And so I say to all of us here, let us resolve to reform our politics so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel the pain and see the promise of America. Let us resolve to make our government a place for what Franklin Roosevelt called “bold, persistent experimentation,” a government for our tomorrows, not our yesterdays.”

If ever there was a dumb policy, it was FDR’s experimentation, which led to an extended depression.  Throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks might be a great way to run an R&D lab, but it sucks when it is the policy of an over-mighty chief executive.  

And the president, who I also like to tag Mucho Pomposo Obama:

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.” Barack Obama, upon winning the Democratic nomination for the presidency 

Okay, it was not an inaugural, but nothing captured Obama’s ethos more than those words. And that was not pablum for the delegates; he believed, and still believes, that he is the absolute best of us, history notwithstanding.  

Here is the actual inaugural. “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.  On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

And 

“The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift.  And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.  We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We’ll restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise healthcare quality and lower costs.  We will harness the sun, the winds, and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.  We will transform our schools, colleges, and universities to meet the demands of a new age.  All this we can do.  All this we will do.

And Finally, Trump just a few weeks ago:

“and my fellow citizens, the golden age of America begins right now.”

Let’s think about that for a moment.  Golden Age.  Not because of anything the American people have done or are going to do but because Trump is president again.  Oi. 

Trump adds, “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom.  From this moment on, America’s decline is over.” 

Reading this, it would be easy to say that Trump is Trump, but note the similarities with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the ringmaster of the Overreach Circus.

“It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But if the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

FDR was the jerk who spawned that when someone wants a lot of money, they say it is “equivalent of war.”  

Trump once said, I alone can fix it,” and received an appropriate amount of opprobrium from the left.  However, this same ideology would praise FDR for the same sentiment.  He essentially said, either Congress gives me the power or I will take it.  Either way, Congress is neutered.  

Historians such as Amity Scholars have cataloged clearly that FDR’s use of executive power, the entire New Deal, failed miserably to achieve the return to economic prosperity inherent in FDR’s statements.  I would conjecture that FDR’s centralized tinkering with the economy lengthened, not shortened, the malaise. His bold experimentation.  In a similar crisis in the mid-1890s, the hands-off approach meant the depression lasted less than five years.  It was into its eleventh year, eight under FDR when the entry into WWII ended the financial crisis.

Even before FDR, we had the fulcrum upon which all recent presidential overreach emerged: Odious Woodrow Wilson.  

“No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. Some old things with which we had grown familiar and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life. To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearth fire of every man’s conscience and vision of the right.

Finally, a vision has been vouchsafed for us in our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision, we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, reconsider, restore, correct the evil without impairing the good, purify and humanize every process of our common life.” 

Every process.  

Yet, as we saw, Coolidge and later Reagan were correctives to this natural impulse to utilize power once given. However, that concept is now lost as neither party recognizes the twin concepts of limitations and restraint.  

There was a wonderful line in JRR Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. When confronted with the one ring, the most powerful tool in the world, the Hobbit Frodo Baggins does not wish to carry such a burden and thinks it better than an experienced, wise Wizard, Gandalf, should carry it.  Gandalf recoils in horror.  “Do not tempt me! For I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.  I would use this Ring from a desire to do good... But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine,” It is the paradox of the democratic government, perhaps all government, that the only people to whom can truly be trusted with power are those who do not want it.  But we do not live in the world of Gandalf.  Even in Washington, every president has been eager to be president.  

And, of course, this is why the founders created separation of powers and checks and balances. Not because they did not know of the lust for power but rather because they knew of it all too well.  Which brings me to my final point.  Even when power has not been truly conferred, the implication of using it exists in spades.  Let me provide two definitions. 

Mandate: the authority to carry out a policy or course of action, regarded as given by the electorate to a candidate or party that is victorious in an election. In this definition, every president has a mandate to govern as they see fit.  However, consider how it works on the ground: “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” Uh no.  Trump’s 1.5% margin in the popular election and his electoral number are in the middle of the pack for the 1960s.  

Let’s add a landslide: there is no formal definition, but it is generally regarded as a 10% margin, something not achieved since 1984.  

Contrast that with Reagan’s 2nd term win in 1984, an 18% margin in the popular vote and over 90% of the electoral votes.  Reagan won the second-largest share of the Electoral College since 1820 (second only to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and the largest for a Republican.  And yet Reagan’s approach did not change.  “These will be years when Americans have restored their confidence and tradition of progress; when our values of faith, family, work, and neighborhood were restated for a modern age; when our economy was finally freed from government’s grip.”  

Contrast that with the robust confidence in government not just in FDR, Clinton, or Obama but also in Trump. They have all misinterpreted a simple concept of getting more votes than the other guy into the country, giving them carte blanche to do as they will, with the “pen and phone,” as Obama famously noted of Executive Orders.  

Peggy Noonan, “The heavy use of executive orders makes all politics personal, having to do with the man who orders and signs with a flourish. Making it personal distorts our understanding of what a leader can and should do. Executive orders ignore the branch of government called Congress and work against its authority, its role in the republican drama.” 

Cleveland, Coolidge, and Reagan did not believe in executive orders; they did not believe in government. Instead, they believed in the spirit and power of the American people.  That belief is not overreach.  From Clinton to Obama to Trump, Biden and Trump, again, we have presidents who do not believe in the American people, only in themselves.  And with such a belief, overreach is inevitable.