 Trevor Burrus I'm Trevor Burrus. Joining me today is Frank H. Buckley, Foundation Professor at George Mason University School of Law. He is the author of, among other books, The Once and Future King, The Rise of Crown Government in America. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Frank. Frank H. Buckley Thanks for having me, Trevor. Great to be here. Trevor Burrus On the first chapter of The Once and Future King, you write that, quote, the long arc of American constitutional government has bent from the monarchical principle of the colonial period to congressional government, then to the separation of power, and finally back again to crown government and the rule by a single person. Is it accurate to say that we have crown government in the United States? Frank H. Buckley Well, we certainly have something increasingly like that. We have a movement towards an all-powerful president, and it so resembles government back in the days of an absolute steward monarch that I thought crown government was an apt description. Trevor Burrus And this means they have the powers of war and all the kind of things that ... Are they the same powers that the colonial revolution area people objected to that the king had? Frank H. Buckley Well, people like John Adams were absolutely outraged by, for example, Governor Hutchison of Massachusetts in which there was an element of self-interest for Adams. You know, the governors had their coterie of people. They were able to, through appointing people of special places, maintain their control over the legislature. That was all stuff that the revolutionaries hated. They saw it as corruption and they saw it as what was wrong with Britain, and they wanted something pure and cleaner for America, which is not quite what we got. Trevor Burrus Interestingly, it's not just a book about America because you kind of are asking a question about how did this come about, what you call crown government in Britain and Canada, which are two closely aligned or at least historically related systems. Frank H. Buckley Right. Well, I was arbitraging the endless fascination Americans have in everything Canadian. Trevor Burrus Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, Poutine is really quite the top of the score. But you would say that a similar thing is happening in Canada and Britain, that there's extreme power residing in one person or one entity. Frank H. Buckley Well, here's what happened. I mean, the official story of the American Constitution, which is mostly a fiction, had it that what the framers really wanted was a pure system of separation of powers. But to the extent they got that, and they had that for a long time, the separation of powers is inherently unstable. When two wrestlers walk into a ring, we expect one only to walk out. The other is going to be dragged out. So in Britain, one started with something like a separation of powers, but then what happened after 1832 in the Great Reform Act was the House of Commons became all powerful. And when the Canadians looked at what was going on, they had a choice between America, which they knew intimately, and Britain. And they decided on the British form of government. And if you read the Canadian Constitution, it's very strange. I mean, it's written as if Canada is a complete monarchy where the Queen or the Governor-General has all the power in the world. And there was one moment in the constitutional debates where somebody said, well, what's that all about? And the fellow who would be the Prime Minister said, well, oh, that's just the way we do things. It doesn't matter. I mean, it's going to be run by the Prime Minister and the House of Commons. That's kind of interesting. You think maybe one of the reasons for this is because we threw off a king with a war, so there was a fair amount of maybe animosity. So we had to be like, we had to break away and say we don't have this. But for Canada, it was much more peaceful. We can have this and she could still be on our money or, I mean, it was, I guess it was Victoria at the time, so it wasn't she. And the monarch can be on our money and we really don't hate them that much. Well, you know, for the Canadians, as for the British, what they were not worth theoreticians, what they were were practical politicians, as were people in Philadelphia in 1787, they just wanted something that they were familiar with and something which worked. And they saw how the American government had apparently broken down in the Civil War and they decided in 1867, well, that's not quite what we want. Well, let's go back to Philadelphia, actually, because you kind of, you go through, if you really want to read a great account of how the governments of these three countries were created or changed, it's definitely in this book. So you kind of go through a good amount of what happened in Philadelphia. So can you walk us through, let's start at the beginning, as we have Jay's Madison. So you start there. It may have 1787, or we can go back to the Annapolis Convention in 1786, but it may have 1786 and Madison is in Philadelphia and he's got some designs about what he wants to happen. Well, if you really want to go back, you go back to the Alexandria Convention, because I'm from Alexandria, Virginia. But seriously, I mean, I think I'm telling a story that is quite inconsistent with the way most people think about the American Constitution, how it was created. Certainly, you know, the historians understand that the political theorists, for the most part, don't have a clue. And anybody who tells you that it's Madison's Constitution is advertising as ignorance. Madison came to town with the idea of a very different Constitution, which would be one where the people would elect the House and the House would choose the Senate, and both together would choose the President. And he got what he wanted. I mean, that's exactly what happened in Canada. So if you call him the father of the Constitution, you have to be clear which country you're talking about. Because if you're talking about the American Constitution, this was one of those cases not unknown in delivery rooms where the father bore little resemblance to the child. And so Madison, this idea, it was filtration, I think, is the word you use of trying to make sure that he thought that each successive level would filter out better people. But it looks kind of parliamentary, as you say. Yeah, it's parliamentary in a sense that the Prime Ministers are filtered out in that when you vote in Canada, you don't vote for a Prime Minister, you vote for the local member of Parliament. And the members of Parliament of the winning party get together and then they choose the Prime Minister, which is precisely the filtration idea which Madison had. Its anti-democratic, filtration was explicitly anti-democratic in Madison's view, because he, like most of the Framers, really disliked democracy. And they created this republic instead, but you also write and not aside from the filtration system for the Senate and the House, but maybe one of the more surprising lines in your book is the modern presidential system with its separation of powers was an unexpected consequence of the democratization of American politics and not a prominent feature of the Framers. Well, they didn't expect that the president would be so well powerful for a couple of reasons. One is they were living in the 18th century and therefore they couldn't anticipate the regulatory state. They couldn't anticipate the modern media. They couldn't anticipate the travel problems back then. I mean, it was harder to get around in America at that time than it was in Roman times with Roman roads. They couldn't expect, in other words, that we'd have anything like what we have today where presidents are elected with an electoral college and its people voting. Instead, what they thought was nobody would ever get a majority in the electoral college. And when that happens, the choice of who will be president is kicked to the House voting by state. So in other words, you'd get a House of Representatives picking the president, which is like what they have in Canada. And it didn't turn out that way because of revolutions in technology and communication. And in short, the modern constitution we have is parasitic upon changes in technology. But you go through... I mean, it's interesting where you go through a lot of the votes. They vote many times on how the president's going to be created. And it's kind of put off to the end of the convention when they actually decide how this is done. But they decide they ask about popular election of president. They ask about choosing by the House, choosing by the Senate. In many different ways, they have a cycling of vote that's kind of interesting. Yeah. And who was the mastermind who put it all together? I mean, my vote would be for Gouverneur Morris as the real father of the Constitution. What happened was, you know, the conference, the convention starts in mid-May. It goes on for four months. And up till September 4, like three and a half months in, we're quite agreed, Congress will appoint the president. And then what happens is a committee is set up to finish, you know, some of the small details that are left outstanding. And they come back with something that's utterly different from what they had before. They come back with, well, really with our present system for picking the president. And in all its convoluted glory. And they present it to the delegates. And the delegates wonder what's going on. And Gouverneur Morris, who's probably the guy who put it together, tries to explain it to them. And he says it's a compromise, roughly, you know. And people look at it and they say, well, you know, we see that the president will probably be appointed by Congress. That's okay. That's more or less what we wanted. They didn't anticipate things. And then some of them did, some of them seem to think that the electors, the members of Electoral College would vote their independent judgment about whether, so they had, so it wasn't pure democratic election. That was filtration as well. And that aspect of the Constitution was praised by both Madison and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. One other difference introduced at the last moment has to do with impeachment. Now, you want to get rid of a prime minister. It's just a simple vote in the House, the majority. You want to get rid of a president, and it's basically impossible. And why is it impossible? It's impossible because you need two thirds of a Senate to convict, right? And up to September 4, it was just a majority. And the change is so fundamental, but nobody picked up on it for the next, for the last two weeks of the convention. There was just too much going on. They wanted to go home. But, but that arguably is as important as anything else in the, in the structure of the Constitution. I mean, put it this way. You know, sadly, Andrew Johnson wasn't impeached. I mean, I, I should like to see presidents impeached more often. Yeah. I mean, for high crimes and misdemeanors and from low Korean crimes and just for the spirit of the thing. But the vote to remove Bill Clinton was 50-50. Now, had we been living under that old Constitution, that would have been enough to remove Bill Clinton. If the deciding vote had been cast in favor of removal by the then Vice President, Al Gore, and would that, wouldn't that have been fun to watch? Yeah. And that would be kind of like a no confidence vote. It would be much easier to get rid of a losing president. I mean, you know, we, we, we might have kissed goodbye to George Bush in 2007 to Obama in 2011. You think that Washington's presence, there are a lot of historians would say that George Washington's presence in the convention, and everyone's understanding that he was going to be president, made them a, not think about the article to the presidential powers as much as they thought about other parts of it, and be not put enough protection in there for people who weren't George Washington and of the character of George Washington. Everybody thought so at the time. Washington was an absolutely commanding figure, really the indispensable American, a person entirely absent from the constitutional histories of Britain and Canada. I mean, nobody, nobody then was as powerful as Washington. And even today, people ask, you know, what would Washington do? Nobody asks, what would Billy Pitt do? Billy Pitt, oh, William Pitt. Yeah, Pitt the younger. Would he go by Pitt to his friends? Remember, there was, there was a quarrel in, in the Simpsons as to whether the Duke of Wellington or Pitt the younger was the best prime minister at Homer slugs and I was somebody. Well, that, that's a good segue to go to Britain. Now, British system, we kind of alluded to it earlier, but I wanted to get a little bit more into it seems that a lot of significant parliamentary changes are at least with the prime minister and the relation to the king occurred during the American Revolution and right after and then, and then further changes occurred in 1830s and you can talk a little about, about how the system evolved in Britain. Well, it was a slow evolution and it really began with Pitt the younger resting control of the finances away from, from George III who conveniently went mad during this period. But by 1832, things had changed out early and it became clear that the House of Lords didn't really count for much and the king didn't really count for much. I mean, the last time that the monarch exercised his or her veto was Queen Anne in 1711, so that's pretty much gone. And that's still true today. Well, yes, although I'll tell you something, the queen is ultimately the last defense against user-patient by a dictator. If for some reason parliament decided to go out of business or give all power to a dictator, you still require the consent of the queen or the monarch for that to happen. Here that role would be played by the Supreme Court, but ultimately the queen has that residual power. It's not all ceremony, there's still something left of her political power in that respect, but only in a case so extreme one could scarcely imagine it. So we had William Pitt and then in the 1830s there was a huge problem with representation in pocket districts and boroughs. Old Serum had a representative and I don't think anyone lived there. I've been to Old Serum. No one, no one lives there. I can guarantee it's been quite a while. Old Serum is a hill near Salisbury, but the constituencies in Britain at that point had been set up in the 16th century and one of them had been washed to sea, for example, so nobody lived there. Two people lived in Serum. But they were still a serving member of parliament. But they still got to pick their member of parliament. Of course, the choice of who would get into parliament at that point depended upon local aristocrats or the king. It was anything but democratic, but nevertheless, Britain was a society where people could rise. Britain never practiced democracy as a theory, but always practiced it as an art. And it is in part the British inheritance in years of colonial self-rule in Britain that helps to explain I think why the American Revolution was successful. And now we're at, after the 1830s reforms, we have no house of, I mean, the House of Lords is pretty much ceremony. Yeah. And we have a more powerful, you think, than originally intended Prime Minister and House of Commons. Well, nothing was intended. Of course, true. Things just grew like topsy. But there was a remarkable switch. And as I say, and in Britain and parliamentary countries, the House of Commons becomes all-powerful and the tendency in presidential countries is for the president to become all-powerful. And one of the things I did in the books since I'm at George Mason and do number crunching was to compare how both of them fare on measures of liberty. And I took a popular, generally accepted measure of how countries are free. And what I discovered was being presidential is really bad if you like liberty. And is that this is for... Well, there are... South American countries. There are about 90 presidential countries and about 60 democratic parliamentary countries. And then there are a bunch of really horrible countries I didn't get into. But roughly it's two billion people live with a presidential system and two billion people live with what I call the Anglo-Canadian model, which has begun in England and first exported to Canada and then throughout the world. And the Anglo-Canadian model is vastly superior, as I say, in terms of protecting liberty. Now, let's talk about some of the reasons why. You list many of them with the characteristics of the president. So we have the separation of powers in America, which is an issue for a grandizing power in the president. So we have presidential legislative power. That's America. What can we talk a little bit about what that is? Well, I think the first thing you want to do is take a look at what some of the anti-presidentialists have to say here in the United States. They worry about things like regulatory reform or whatever. And the point is there is a tendency towards concentration of power in a political leader under any system, whether it's Britain, Canada or the United States. The regulatory state tends to produce a very, very powerful political leader, prime minister or president. So does the modern media. The question then is, which system is better able to constrain an overreaching political leader? And things like the fact that you have to meet the House of Commons and the possibility of a vote of note confidence, constrain prime ministers. And that's absent here. So, you know, Obama can say, for example, if they don't want to pass it, I've got a pen. But both sides, the Canadian, the British and the American system all have this regulatory state to some degree. Is it worse in America, do you think? Only in one respect. And that is because America is richer than any place else. I mean, I expect that they have, for example, an Estonian EPA. But I mean, but if somebody has a problem about, you know, wetlands and Estonia, I sort of see them picking up the phone and telephoning the Estonian EPA. And there are three people in the room. And one of them has a manual typewriter. And they don't have anything to, you know, they can't do anything. Whereas here, you have a, you know, hundreds of thousands of EPA lawyers, you know, with the absolute desire to put you in jail. This is definitely true. Another part of the presidential power you discuss is the non-enforceability powers. Another one of these crown government things that they're, they can now not enforce laws passed by Congress. And there's little that Congress can do about it seemingly. Yeah, one of the most fascinating things that's happening right now is a case called Texas VUS, which is the attempt by the state of Texas and other states to get, to force the president to adhere to the U.S., not Texas, but the U.S. Constitution. And what Obama has done is Obama has really through a, not an executive order, but a memorandum through his Homeland Security Secretary, he's created basically what really looks like legislation offering something like amnesty work permits for about four to five million people. It's so much look like just pure legislation that I found it really quite shocking. And I expected in fact that the Supreme Court would do something about it. Now with the death of Scalia one, it doesn't expect that to happen, in which case one would revert to the Fifth Circuit decision which struck it down. But you know what, shortly after the first trial judgment in the case, Obama said that's okay, I'm not going to deport the men away. So the difference is there are no work permits but nobody's going to be deported. So the thing is, how do you force a president to enforce the laws? You know, I mean can you, you can't issue a mandamus order saying Obama do this. I mean it's, it's been done. It's been done for example when courts have ordered mayors to desegregate and things like that. But at the level of, you know, the grand constitutional theory it's hard to see the Supreme Court even had Scalia been there to do that. Now compare that to a parliamentary system. In the parliamentary system, in a parliamentary system, firstly there'd be no need because what you'd be talking about is control of parliament by a prime minister who's, you know, the leader of a party in a majority, typically. And so they pass legislation. So he would be able to, he would be able to do what he wants but you know if, if, if he mucks it up in some way, I mean he still has to meet the house and, and run for election. And he has a, there's a form of daily accountability which really doesn't exist here. I mean a good example would be the Benghazi hearings, which were very important here in Washington and probably not too many other places but in parliament for example the opposition has the ability to keep the prime minister's feet to the fire as long as they want. And it's not a matter of some hearing which may or may not be covered. It's the main business of parliament. The House of Commons is really the opposition's playground. It's the opposition who decides what's going to happen. It's the opposition really which sets the rule. It's the opposition which says this is going to be our issue. And if, if we have something that resonates with the public we will stick with this for a full month if need be to bring the, the, the party in power down. You know, Trey Gowdy's hearings were nothing like that. But you know, it sounds like you're very much supporting, you are supporting a parliamentary system but they... Well, I'm 229 years too late. But they have, they have drawbacks. I mean, as you said, Britain and Canada have extremely powerful crown rule governments themselves. They're just better than the one in America in your opinion. Yeah, I mean there's, there's a natural tendency towards the restoration of a steward monarchy if I can put it that way. There's a natural tendency, I mean the stewards were moderns and it was the opposition at the time, Sir Edward Cook, one of the most repulsive people in British imperial, parliamentary history. It was the opposition which was in today's term kind of all fashioned. Modernity favors the centralization of power in a, in a leader. But as that's so dangerous one has to ask, yes well what system is better able to control the guy? So, you know, daily accountability in the house, the motion of non-confidence, but also the idea that you have to make a name for yourself in the house to get ahead. And, and parliamentary systems are really good at ferreting out the thin skinned and the grandiose and the people of problems with power and the nasties. And it's not the case, for example, that many of the, without getting into names, it's not the case that leaders who dominate in the polls or who here were presidents in the past would always succeed in the parliamentary system. They'd be found out and they'd be ridiculed. I mean, you have to, you know, you have to deal with people who will stand 20 feet away from you and, and ridicule you and take it and respond with wit and judgment and information and in Canada in two languages and not something too many people here could do. You mentioned centralization as being the inevitability, maybe, is the way it's, it's the natural process to centralize power, but does that mean that therefore we should have stayed with the Articles of Confederation or we should be living in smaller provinces where centralization isn't so dangerous? Well, you're, you're talking about the, the optimal size of government and there's a, an argument you can make that America is just too big. There are other arguments that it is doing just fine the way it is. It's too big in the sense that when power is centralized here, power is really centralized as opposed to a smaller country. And it's also the case when you have a large country, this was an argument made by Russo, when you have a really large country then you have to have a whole bunch of representatives, right? But you have only one president and the more the representatives, the more they are a, a, well, just a, a mixture of, of, of voices nobody hears. I mean, we know what the president is, but the Speaker of the House is from someplace in Wisconsin you never heard of, you know. So maybe we should avoid, I just, There's another thing to be said for large government, by the way, large countries. There was a really, really good book called The Race Between Information Technology by Lawrence Katz and Claudette Golden. And they said the reason why America cleaned up in the 20th century was because it made all these investments in human capital and education. And, and, and Europe wasn't doing that. But the thing is, other countries were doing that as well. Australia, Canada, New Zealand made equal investments in education. But what they lacked was size. I mean, what they lacked were markets in short. So by virtue of its size, America began to dominate and still dominates in a way that smaller countries can't. You can call it mercantilism or you can call it imperialism. And much of it was nasty, but nevertheless, yeah, it, it, it does have its positive aspects. There's one of the really astute observations you make in the book about one of the virtues of parliamentary systems over presidential systems is that you separate the head of state from the head of government. And it, and it reminds me of my colleague Gene Healy's call to the presidency book in the sense of what we do to presidents and how much we lionize them. Could you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. And, and in as much as I'm here to plug the once in future king, let me also plug Gene Healy's book. It's absolutely splendid. You know, this, this is something like, you know, the question is do, do fish notice that they're swimming in water? No, they're, they just live in it. Do Americans notice that there, it matters that the president is the head of state? No, it's just sort of the way things are. But if you're in a parliamentary system, you're accustomed to the idea that the head of state, the queen is someone to be revered. She's a symbol of the country. I mean, you can unabashedly love her without being political in any way. But as for prime ministers, their figures are fun. I mean, you ridicule them. Nobody takes them seriously. Whereas here, if you make fun of the president, it's your, your, you know, it's like you're being disloyal. And that brings a, a different person to the top. I think it also explains not only how one loves, but also how one might hate the president. If he defines who you are in some respects as an American, if you're supposed to love the guy, if, you know, a national tragedy brings a presidential healing speech and tears to the eyes of various commentators, that doesn't happen in a parliamentary system and it's dangerous for liberty to clothe real live power with the aura of mystique of a monarchy. So it's best to take the head of, the head of state and make them somewhat impotent. And then the head of government should just be a politician who we treat accordingly, which is true. You know, a figure of fun. Another thing you listed for presidential harms, and we kind of talked a little bit, but the president's holding office for a fixed period of time can be harmful for freedom you talk about. Well, you know, if a prime minister mucks up, he's toast very, very quickly and that happens fairly often as a matter of fact. With the president you're locked in. I mean, there are positive things to be said about it. It is easier to make credible commitments if you're a president and you're there for a fixed period of time. I mean, Nixon employed that power when dealing with the Soviets in the 70s. He just said, you know, just remember I'm around for a while. And I speculate that Bobby Lee's incursion into Pennsylvania was dictated by the fact that he'd have to face this really adamant president for another full year and he had to do something desperate to change the odds. But overall, you think it harms the freedom? Well, you're stuck with a guy and during that period he's essentially all powerful and he's not removable by impeachment. It just can't happen. And then the other one which might resonate with our listeners today that you discuss is the presidential system's unique propensity to deadlock and how deadlock is not good for freedom. Well, of course, you know, gridlock is a function of a separation of powers and what gridlock means is legislation doesn't get passed and when legislation doesn't get passed you get the phenomenon of a president saying, well, if they can't do it, I'm here with my pen, therefore I will do it. You know, to that extent I think presidents actually like gridlock. Gridlock empowers presidents. It means you don't have to pay attention to what they're doing down on Capitol Hill. You are the tribune of the people. You will defend the people. You are in charge. You know, I recall many Republicans at various points in the last 30 years saying pray for gridlock, right? Nothing's going to happen. But the point is, you know, here you're stuck with all these really horrible laws and you can't get rid of them. You know, maybe Obamacare will be changed but think of this absolutely stupid 1965 immigration act or think of the tax code not changed since 68, I guess. 86. 86, that's right, that's right. But and you can't, you know, you can't change them and they're there and they're horrible and you're stuck with them. Whereas in a parliamentary system, you know, if things aren't working, you elect in your party and they can change things very, very quickly. The gridlock aspect seems directly related to the immigration issue that you discussed previously with President Obama. Was that a product of gridlock, would you say, his actions? It is a product of gridlock to the extent that you know, you're stuck with a law which is absolutely stupid in many respects, which has turned out quite differently from the way people at the time said they thought it was going to turn out, which advantages one party politically but which imposes a real cost upon the country and produces a poisonous atmosphere I think in general, which we see in the current politics of 2016, I mean, one would like to have, one would like to see America as a more generous country but one can also understand how it's not generous and nobody has to blame that each side is doing what it has to do in a country of low trust like America where you can't trust the other guy. Well, that's the term that I've used, I stole it from my colleague, Mark Calabria, but he says, we live in the steal everything that's not tied down era of government, which is whenever you actually have some amount of power, you do as much as you possibly can to take it and it's going to be a bipartisan agreement and if you have the presidency because we go back to this quote from George Mason and I want to- And then never too much to be praised, George Mason. Exactly. I want to ask you about that the quote is, this is interesting going back to the convention, we are not indeed constituting a British government but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one. Yeah, in 1787, Georgia Third's powers were beginning to wane and people in Philadelphia had realized how things had changed, that the commons was becoming more powerful than it had before, that Georgia Third, whose powers had been increasing, had now been checked to some extent but what they didn't want was a steward kind of monarchy and Mason was one of the leaders in that respect and Jefferson said an elective monarchy is not the government for which we fought our revolution. So if you have a constitution where Congress doesn't get things done and where only the president can get things done then what you have is an elected monarchy, you have an all powerful monarch who's got a four year lifespan and probably eight and what you've got is the only check then is those elections every four years, you may say well, well, that's all we need but of course that's all they had in Argentina as well and indeed in Argentina they had the specter of wives succeeding husbands but then that could never happen here, could it? Now I asked you this before we started recording but would anyone who signed the constitution, now Madison didn't get what he wanted, Hamilton wanted more of a monarchy but he might like it more but would anyone if they came here today look at what we have and say this is what I wanted from the constitution or I expected or at least I'm okay with what we have here? Well, it's hard to say. I mean I rather like Gouverneur Morris so I think more than anyone is the father of the constitution and Morris was so cynical about human motivations. If America, if he saw America as corrupt he would have said well yes of course I expected this. Welcome to politics. Yeah, welcome to life as it really is. James Wilson an unremembered person deserves the honor of being the person who more than anyone else supported democracy and to the extent that we are democratic he would have liked that and to the extent that we are corrupt he would not have liked that. They all hated corruption indeed when the arguments were brought to bear it's remarkable how often the fear of corruption swayed the delegates. What corruption meant was Britain and that's what they didn't want. They were people who I mean it's tried to say that they believed in republican virtue but they really did. They really thought that we would produce a country which would be more virtuous and if we could keep it as such that would be fine. You know everybody mistakes, there was a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin he's leaving the convention in September 17 some lady approaches him and says well what have you given us Dr. Franklin? He says a republic if you can keep it and everyone seems to think well what he meant was will you be virtuous? That's just right wing can't I think however I think what he really meant is would it be a monarchy because Franklin thought there is a natural inclination in every one of us towards monarchy and perhaps as you look at the adulation given to Obama in 2008 why yes Franklin would have said yes this is exactly what I feared. So if we're living in the days of king president and it seems that the parties will coalesce around presidents although Trump is still a I guess an open question but what can we do? Oh well that's a tough one. I don't think that's fair. Are you just here to do that's not a fair question. Are you just here to doomsay or are you going to tell us what to do for it? Well you know nobody wants one to write a book saying things are peachy keen you know. True but you do have some suggestions in the book. I do have some suggestions I don't know how much how well they would work. You know that I suggested for example referenda congressional referenda I mean if right now it's the president dealing with you know 535 people on Capitol Hill that's an unequal contest because it's one voice against a cacophony of other voices but but if you had a national referendum on something like the public debt then Congress could say ah but we have the backing of the people on this one Mr. President you know you better back down. That would require a constitutional amendment I am asking. I don't know I don't know why it couldn't be done by way of legislation. I mean the referendum wouldn't be binding but it would have a moral suasion and this is all about moral suasion. I mean the president employs a moral suasion of being the only person elected by the country as a whole and being the head of government that's that's a big time moral suasion as against a John Boehner or Paul Ryan. So yeah so it's it's a matter of democratic legitimacy which is which is what the president does. Now what about congressional reform because they have people on the hill like Senator Mike Lee who is running the Article 1 project to try and take some of this back that the president has taken from Congress. Was that something that could work? I don't know if it would. I see the modern presidency as almost the inevitable consequence of what's going on. Let me explain. Sometimes it's suggested that you know there is a way back and let me lay it out. You know we've been ruled it's true by a power hungry president who wants to rule as a monarch but what we'll do is we'll elect our guy and then he'll rule modestly with Congress and that's sort of Act 1. Already I'm you know I'm making some assumptions here right. Then Act 2 comes when the Democrats the party of untrammeled presidential power when the Democrats see how moderately the Republicans have ruled when they had all three branches and the Democrats will be chasen will be so impressed with Republican moderation that when they get their turn they then will rule as Republicans do. And do you see a flaw on that argument? I see a few yes. Yeah okay well this is called being a patsy. Right? Yes. You know I'm going to be nice and then you're going to be nice it's called being a patsy. So that's the tendency in which both parties will tend I think to elect very very powerful presidents. And ultimately that's a threat to liberty it's also a problem with corruption as well but you know there are there only I said there were 90 presidential countries. Okay only three of them got top marks from Freedom House on liberty. Do you know what three they are? America's one. America's one. Do you mean top marks in the top 20 or? Well no sort of you know it's it's a top category of one. President America well Germany has a de facto president don't they? Yeah Germany no Germany's parliamentary. But isn't there someone called the president yeah but the thing about parliamentary systems is if you sadly are not monarchies then you'll have a figurehead president which is what they do in a lot of countries. I don't think I can get the other two. Well the other one you know one is France but the thing about France is France has a semi-presidential system where Congress roughly the legislature picks cabinet and the other one is Uruguay which is so nice a country you'd almost think they were Anglophone. Well they did just legalize drugs or marijuana at least I guess so. Yeah I'm not on top of that Uruguayan. Well there is I remember their current president as a former prisoner of the past government so he's got an interesting job. So are we this might be the same answer but optimistic in terms of because we have we I hate to have to bring up the T word the Trump word. I mentioned him earlier and you alluded to him earlier but since he has sucked all the air out of Washington D.C. but we're here talking about presidential power and presidential figures and who gets elected president in versus kind of people who get elected in parliament as part of politicians versus reality show stars are we seeing sort of the apotheosis of the American presidential mistake that happened at least in terms of what their expectations were in the form of Donald Trump. Well it's certainly an extension of every trend I've described. I don't know what would happen. I will say this for Trump he has tapped on to issues that everybody in Washington had pretty much ignored. Yes. And full marks for that. I you know I I don't know the fellow but I know other people who know him rather well and who say he is you know on balance not a crazy in any way. It's it's a funny time. You see it's it's a time when official Washington and all the people who think they matter in the the intellectual conservative intellectual world when they're ignored and that must be a psychic wound but there's one more thing I fancy and it's this it's that like Muhammad Ali like the John Wayne like the Beach Boys Trump is someone who could only be an American and I think many Americans recognize that he could not be a Canadian I mean he could not be British Muhammad Ali could not be from Africa he could only be American and and for the conservative intellectuals who absolutely detest Trump I think there's a certain element of a psychic wound of a of the rage of Caliban that sees his face in the mirror this is an American you see many I think many conservative intellectuals live in an imaginary country south of Iceland and east of the New Yorker and that's not America and I you know it's not my American my America is has hip hop and monster truck rallies and things like that to the extent that conservative elites are unhappy yeah I like that so that makes you this is on the on the way to the question things going to get worse before they get better regardless of Trump you know the the guy who had the best comment about all of this is Jim Webb who's absolutely as nuts as anybody out there but Webb said you know with Trump it could either be really good or really bad and with Hillary it would be more of the same and I'm not going to vote for Hillary but looking past this election it doesn't seem there's anything that's going to turn the basic tide that you've described in the once and future king there's and we mentioned some things but no right now there's not a serious discussion of reform or national referenda so we will continue to give more power to the president it seems to me into the future we'll ask yourself this question I mean think back to 2008 and and and Obama and not you know maybe that was a one-off but before things change you need a realization by the American people that there's something rather dangerous about this accumulation of power in one person alternatively you can foresee in America in which people like rock star presidents and the question for you is which America do you foresee for eight 16 years down the road