Donald Trump and the Gift of Fear

The prospect of Donald Trump as president is only slightly less ridiculous than the idea ofCharlie Sheen with nukes —and possibly more frightening. And yet, it looks as though the verbally incontinentcelebreality billionaire has  a one in three chance of being elected come Tuesday.  Terrifying, yes, but fear can be useful. In this case, it ought to concentrate the mind wonderfully: if someone so manifestly unfit, so transparently likely to abuse power, can come within striking distance of the presidency, then maybe it was a bad idea to concentrate so much power in the Oval Office in the first place.    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-spannin g war. Bush began—and Obama continued—the host of secret dragnet surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden—andothers 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. America ’s center-left papers of record have lately begun to notice that the vast powers recent presidents have forged would be available to Trump as well. TheNew York Times ’sCarl Hulsewrites that Obama ’s assertion of a presidential po...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs