With Labor Day behind us, the 2024 presidential election is a sprint to the November finish. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are under the public microscope for the people to determine who they wish to lead as the next president of the United States.
Much of this discussion focuses on policy positions or identity. What a candidate will do on important issues and whether he or she will seek the good of the whole country, not just one part, matters greatly.
However, it is not the only point. We are electing a president, a particular office within our constitutional structure. The Constitution gives that office particular duties distinct from those exercised by Congress or by the judiciary.
Presidents wield the people’s executive power. This power is not the authority to make laws, nor is it the power to resolve disputes about the law in cases or controversies. Those powers rest with the other branches. Instead, the executive power, at its core, involves the threatened or actual use of force.
The president must take care that the laws are enforced against those who would disobey them. The president, as commander in chief, must use our military to fight against foreign threats. Together, the president uses force to protect the public from crime and from invasion. The need for this power shows that our Founding Fathers knew that human nature, while capable of great good, also was tempted toward aggressive evil. Making people obey the law, foreign and domestic, is needed in this world and provided through the executive power.
Moreover, a president must show certain characteristics in order to properly carry out his or her executive role. Legislative bodies deliberate carefully, even cautiously. Judicial bodies also show deliberation and caution while interpreting and applying the law. But the presidency is defined by vigor, by action, by decisiveness. The Federalist Papers pegged this quality as “energy” and said a government without plenty of it was a bad government, regardless of any other potentially redeeming factors.
We need energy in the executive because we need to stamp out crime and foreign threats quickly and with power. Otherwise, people see their rights infringed, their safety threatened, and their way of life disturbed.
In addition, presidents must be loyal. They must be loyal to the Constitution and to the laws, carrying them out faithfully rather than replacing those rules for their own preferences. But ultimately, this loyalty to the law is loyalty to the people. They are the ultimate human source of political power. The Constitution is their creation. The laws are a delegated use of their authority through Congress.
When we assess Trump and Harris, we should consider more than whether they agree with our views of policy and justice. We also should demand they tell us how they understand the office of the presidency. Do they comprehend its powers, both in what it should do and what it should refrain from doing? Do they have the qualities of energy and faithfulness needed to vigorously and justly act on these grounds?
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President Joe Biden proved wanting in many of these categories. He was rebuked regularly for pushing past the powers of the presidency and into the legislative realm, especially with his student loan forgiveness plans. He also clearly lacked the energy to occupy the office, resulting in clear deficiencies on important matters of domestic and foreign security.
With the presidential debates, I hope we have a real discussion about the powers of the presidency and the fitness of both candidates to fill the office. It would make for a better campaign discourse and might further enlighten our decision come November.
Adam Carrington is an associate professor at Ashland University.
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