The “first 100 days” was a dictatorial metaphor from the start. It entered the presidential lexicon in 1933, when journalists likened FDR’s legislative onslaught to Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1815 breakout from Elba and subsequent three-month rampage, ending at Waterloo.
In his 2010 memoir, George W. Bush noted that, thanks to intelligence reports, “for months after 9/11, I would wake up in the middle of the night worried.” That’s not surprising considering the material covered in these meetings.
Central to the briefing is the “threat matrix,” a compendium assembled by the CIA and the FBI that includes all the “threats” — or more accurately “leads” — needing to be followed up. This matrix is made up of largely whispers, rumors, and other unconfirmed, raw information, much of which is below the threshold for top leaders to be following. So, instead of helping brief the President with actionable data, these briefings largely contribute to a pervasive sense that every day might bring a new attack.
Perhaps the toughest problem to address is the role of the presidential spouse. The post of first lady (or first gentleman, in the event of a female president) is supposed to be primarily ceremonial or dealing with noncontroversial matters. That’s an important point, because there is no provision for formal accountability, whether congressional oversight or some other mechanism, for policy initiatives undertaken by a person in that post. Yet some first ladies have exercised a substantial amount of influence over policy.
It’s no secret that the “most powerful office in the world” grew even more powerful in the Bush-Obama years. Both presidents stretched the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force into a wholesale delegation of congressional war powers broad enough to underwrite open-ended, globe-spanning war. Bush began—and Obama continued—the host of secret dragnet surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden—and others we’re still largely the dark about. And lately, on the home front, Obama has used the power of the pen to rewrite broad swathes of American law and spend billions of dollars Congress never appropriated.
When our scholars lionize presidents who break free from constitutional restraints, when our columnists and talking heads repeatedly call upon the “commander in chief ” to dream great dreams and seek the power to achieve them—when voters look to the president for salvation from all problems great and small—should we really be surprised that the presidency has burst its constitutional bonds and grown powerful enough to threaten American liberty?
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
