Imperial Ambitions: The Rise of Presidential Power

Three years after he resigned from office,

“Richard Nixon gave an interview to the British journalist David Frost and made a striking observation.”

So what in a sense you're saying is that there are certain situations where the president can decide that it's in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal. Or when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition. Exactly. Exactly. It was a startling statement from a man who had faced impeachment for abusing his high office.

But Nixon was a very good lawyer with a strong grasp of the Constitution.

And he understood a crucial feature of American democracy.

Perhaps it's crucial weakness. The extraordinary potential power of the president. The Department of Justice technically works for the president. It is part of the executive ranch. [MUSIC]

And as Commander-in-Chief, he has vast scope to define acts in the best interest of the nation. The meeting will come toward him. The Constitution's real check on the president. [MUSIC]

“What did the president know? And when did he know it?”

Impeachment. All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Is a political process not a legal one?

I shall resign, the presidency affected that noon tomorrow. With removal from office requiring a conviction voted by two thirds of the U.S. Senate. [MUSIC] Few presidents have navigated these realities better than president Donald Trump. After two impeachments, four indictments, and a guilty verdict.

Congratulations, Mr. Kirk. [MUSIC] Trump was elected president once again. [MUSIC]

“In his second term, he seems to be living by Nixon's declaration.”

He has defied Congress, ignored the courts, denied due process, attacked free speech, prosecuted opponents. The United States military began major combat operations in Iran. [MUSIC] Launched a war unilaterally, and even deployed the military to Main Street.

He who saves his country does not violate any law, Trump has declared. That's a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. The first item in president Trump is signing as the resision of five executive actions. Could you imagine Biden doing this? I don't think so.

But Trump is actually the culmination of a long story. [MUSIC] Presidential power has been veering out of control for years.

In ways the founders never intended.

Truth be told, the American presidency was a ticking time bomb. A dangerous vehicle for an unscrupulous person to become a quasi-order craft. To understand, we need to go back and tell the story of the imperial presidency. [MUSIC] Welcome to a special report on presidential power, I'm Farid Zakaria.

In 1973, the famous historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published a book called The Imperial Presidency, an instant classic. [MUSIC] It was the height of the Watergate scandal when presidential power had reached disturbing new levels. [MUSIC]

Schlesinger argued that Richard Nixon's abuses of power were singular and egregious. [MUSIC] But he also pointed out they were part of a pattern. Presidents before Nixon, on both sides of the aisle, had been accumulating more and more

power while Congress, the People's House, had grown weaker and weaker. That disturbing imbalance of power has actually gotten worse in many ways since Nixon.

[MUSIC] America's constitutional convention was held in secret so that the founders could debate and speak freely. [MUSIC] But a leak from the proceedings to a local newspaper made one thing clear.

It said, we never once thought of a king.

[MUSIC] The founders detested monarchy having risked their lives to defeat one. [MUSIC] So far as we approve of monarchy, the revolutionary Thomas Bain wrote, in America, the law is king.

[MUSIC] The nation's first constitution, the articles of confederation, actually had no executive branch at all.

“There was no president in the United States, because that's how much the framers felt”

that you couldn't trust centralized authority. [MUSIC] That very weak government failed, so James Madison, the father of the new constitution, included a president, tightly constrained by checks and balances between the legislature and the judiciary.

[MUSIC] If there was one branch that rained supreme, it was not the president, it was Congress. [MUSIC] The founders called it the first branch. [MUSIC]

In Republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates Madison wrote. A healthy role of Congress and a power vested in Congress ensures that there can be no key. [MUSIC]

“Congress would pass all the laws and was given the most crucial powers”

to tax, regulate commerce, and declare war. The president was to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Madison wanted a weak executive. It was Congress giving the orders, and then it was just up to the present to execute those orders. For 150 years, Madison's system worked.

[MUSIC] Presidents wielded more power, most notably Abraham Lincoln in the civil war. But when the wars were over, powers swung back to Congress. [MUSIC] Everything changed dramatically with the start of the Cold War.

The conflict with the Soviet Union was a never ending nuclear armed crisis.

[MUSIC] Leading presidents to claim vast inherent powers as commanders in chief. Presidential power grows enormously in the 50s and the 60s. [MUSIC] High Truman launched the Korean War without even asking Congress.

[MUSIC] We are finding in Korea for our own national security and survival. [MUSIC] The first president to do so in such a large-scale conflict, before the Cold War that would have been unimaginable.

[MUSIC] President Dwight Eisenhower toppled Iran's government in a coup without going to Congress. Air action is now in execution. Linda Johnson's administration faked the crisis in the Tomkin Gulf. [MUSIC]

And used a congressional vote on that skirmish. [MUSIC]

As the rubber stamp for a war, with a half million troops.

[MUSIC] The imperial presidency was in full swing. And then came Richard Nixon. American South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters all along the Cambodian frontier. [MUSIC]

“Abroad he expanded the Vietnam War often in secret and asserted”

extraordinary powers on the home front. [MUSIC] Nixon refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. A practice known as impoundment. [MUSIC]

Violating Congress's power of the Purse. [MUSIC] He withheld information from Congress claiming executive privilege. Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment at the Democratic National Committee.

And of course, there was water gate. [MUSIC] The break-in and the cover-up were actually a small part of a much larger criminal operation.

[MUSIC]

“There were vast domestic spying programs, burglaries, sabotage, and intimidation.”

[MUSIC] Involving the justice department and the FBI, the IRS and the CIA, all targeting Nixon's enemies list. Would you consider the crimes to be impeachable if they did a bloody -- but to Nixon, all of these criminal acts were okay while because -- or when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. [MUSIC]

The White House made it clear today that President Nixon has decided not to release tapes of his conversations. Watergate culminated in a constitutional crisis. If I were to make public these tapes, the confidentiality of the office of the president

would always be suspect from now on.

[MUSIC] Nixon refused to turn over his tapes. Nothing like this has ever happened before. There are offices of concealed by the FBI. Until finally, relenting to a Supreme Court order.

“All those in favor, signify by saying aye, all those pose no.”

No, no, aye, aye, aye. Facing almost certain impeachment. There's a president waving goodbye. The president resigned. My fellow Americans are long, national, nightmare is over.

Are you prepared to take the oath? I jirled our poor to solemnly swear.

After Watergate, America vowed never again.

This is election, 74. This is the way it looks across the country. Democrats will win two hundred and ninety nine seats. And elected a wave of reformers to Congress to reign in the presidency. [MUSIC]

The first branch awoke from its slumber, passing a slew of bipartisan laws for bidding impoundment, limiting surveillance, and putting watchdogs in executive agencies to name just a few measures. Congress is saying we need to reassert our authority. [MUSIC]

The Justice Department established strict rules preventing the White House from meddling in its cases and from influencing its decisions on whom to prosecute.

It was a reset between Congress and the president and a return to the kind of checks and balances

that the founders had envisioned. The hope was to prevent a future president from becoming imperial ever again. [MUSIC] That is the World Trade Center and we have Un-- But the imperial presidency?

[MUSIC] Made a comeback. [MUSIC] Big time. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion.

[MUSIC] That's next. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

“That's how I got news for your ears, the podcast.”

I am your host, Michael Ian Black. What are we going to talk about? Let's get into it. We're talking about. We're back at war with Iran.

And Trump has the AI Slop videos to prove it. Dan Driscoll quits, right when we learned who he was. Trump's midterm plans involved several unpopular things himself and data centers. Have you got news for your ears? Check us out on Apple and as a music, wherever your podcast, even better you can watch,

the podcast on Spotify. [MUSIC] From dismantling government agencies to prosecuting political enemies to unilaterally launching a war, many of President Trump's actions often appear to violate the law. But all of them are perfectly legal according to an extreme theory of presidential power.

Conceived on the fringes of conservatism, the theory was rejected by the mainstream right for years, but it gradually gained traction. Becoming what some experts today call the legal pathway to American autocracy. It all began in the 1980s. [MUSIC]

On a warm January day in 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared the dawn of his revolution. Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. [MUSIC] He was determined to drastically roll back the federal government.

Look at his Reagan's budget cutting blade is hanging over the federal government. But Reagan's new hardcore conservatism, a historic departure from moderate Republicans, face to challenge.

“How could it possibly defeat a massive government bureaucracy that had been lawfully created by Congress?”

It makes a lot of promises. But he is faced with a congressional body that is very hostile to his agenda. The president of the United States. [MUSIC] The solution, a new imperial presidency.

[MUSIC] As political scientists Terry Moe and William Howell describe in their book, "Projectory of Power." It was the right's fervent desire to slash big government that led to a novel and

ultimately dangerous legal theory.

[MUSIC] The unitary executive theory. [MUSIC] The godfather of this new doctrine was Reagan's close advisor and second attorney general, Edwin Mies. The framers did not envision a weak executive.

“Mies recruited talented young conservative lawyers and turned Reagan's justice department”

into a kind of right-wing legal think tank, turning out new conservative ideas. [MUSIC] Out of this transformed department of justice came the unitary executive theory. [MUSIC] In a radical departure from 200 years of precedent, the justice department argued that the president

enjoyed complete control over agencies within the executive branch and could ignore laws

passed by Congress which had created and shaped these agencies in the first place.

[MUSIC] There were later attempts to say, "Well, it's kind of been there since the dawn of time." But no, this was a thing that was invented right at that moment in the mid-80s. Justice Department officials even suggested that the president could defy the Supreme Court. [MUSIC]

It suggests that the president is beholden to no one but the president. Some veteran Republicans were appalled by these claims to new unchecked presidential power.

“There's a lot of tension with old-school Republicans who are like, "This is not the way that you do things."”

[MUSIC] Also concerned, the right-leaning Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rejected Reagan administration arguments. In a seven-to-one decision, it swatted down the theory in 1988. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rankwist,

a former head of the Nixon White House legal team. [MUSIC] And no bleeding hard liberal himself would not even use the words unitary executive in his decision. Chief Justice William Rankwist was a conservative and Rankwist had no use for the unitary executive theory. It was a devastating defeat for the legal theory.

But within a faction of the right, it's influenced continued to grow. And it was championed by the ultimate Washington insider Richard Cheney. [MUSIC] Starting as a staffer in the Nixon administration, Dick Cheney became president General Ford's chief of staff. And he watched the presidency get cut down to size in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate.

And from inside the White House weren't young Cheney as being shaped. This did not look like a necessary constitutional correction. It looked like an outrage. From that point on, Cheney made it his mission to rebuild the power of the White House. We've seen our concern about Watergate and Vietnam

create that the myth of the so-called Imperial Presidency. [MUSIC] In addition to domestic agencies, Cheney believed the Constitution gave the president absolute power over national security. With a president as commander and chief and the interests of protecting American lives is justified

in taking whatever action he deems appropriate. Dick, welcome aboard.

As Secretary of Defense, he urged President George H. W. Bush to launch the first Gulf War

without going to Congress as required by law. The battle has been joined. [MUSIC] Bush rejected Cheney's advice and got Congress to greenlight the U.S. intervention. [MUSIC]

Cheney later claimed that Bush could have attacked even if Congress had voted no. I would certainly recommend to the president we go forward anyway. [MUSIC] That is the World Trade Center and we have a-- That it would take a national tragedy.

Another plane to splash down right now. For Cheney's view of executive power to be fully realized.

The horror of September 11th quickly provided an opportunity for Vice President Cheney

to expand presidential power. Fear is this incredibly compelling tool and the person that knows that better than anyone else is Dick Cheney.

“I think in 9/11 what Cheney saw is an opportunity to put the unitary executive theory”

into full foam practice and to ensure that this is an ideology that is full steam ahead. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion. [MUSIC] As Congress prepared to send the country to war against Al Qaeda. [MUSIC]

President George W. Bush's White House lobbied for an even broader mandate. A blank check to wage war anywhere in the world including inside the United States.

Congress said no, but the White House grabbed more power for itself anyway.

After 9/11, a sort of new and improved version of the Unitary Executive Theory destroys the ability of Congress to regulate the entire government. [MUSIC] Reviving the once-fringe Unitary Executive Theory to give the President free reign over domestic agencies and combining it with Cheney's belief in a President's complete control of

a national security, Bush's legal team wrote secret mammals claiming nearly unlimited presidential power. [MUSIC]

“Those mammals would form the legal background of the war in terror.”

[MUSIC] And lead to some of Bush's most controversial policies. [MUSIC] Apparently our government has been spying on us. From warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans phone calls and emails.

So-called enhanced interrogation techniques. To the use of torture. [MUSIC] Congress had passed laws making those actions illegal. But the White House said it could simply ignore those laws.

Dick Cheney had encouraged people throughout the government to say whatever we do is part of our inherent power and can't be limited by Congress. Cheney's decades-long quest to restore presidential power had been accomplished.

His triumph then leaves a powerful legacy today.

“Dick Cheney lays the blueprint for Donald Trump's expansion of presidential power.”

Without Dick Cheney, there is no imperial Donald Trump. [MUSIC] Coming up. [MUSIC] A young senator from Illinois who blasted Bush and Cheney's imperial presidency.

Cheney just come to America and became an imperial president himself. [MUSIC] Not so long ago, it was the Republican party that was rising up in protest over a president, they said, was acting like a king. The imperial president, the autocratic leader of some Republicans call him the imperial president,

that he's using the executive power to go beyond his true authority. The imperial president they were talking about. Barack Obama. [MUSIC] And in a way, the Republicans had a point.

We can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won't act, I will. [MUSIC] There we go. [MUSIC]

President Obama was transforming the country, often with the stroke of a pen, and without Congress. [MUSIC] It was a shocking turnaround for the former constitutional law professor. Who won the campaign trail had blasted George W. Bush's aggressive use of executive power.

But we've paid a heavy price for having a president whose priority is expanding his own power. The Constitution is treated like a nuisance. [MUSIC] But once in the White House, Obama began to expand his own power. Obama starts doing things through executive order,

and just sign a executive order after executive order. At the beginning of his presidency, Obama bent over backwards to work with congressional Republicans on an economic stimulus plan. To make our economy stronger. On health care reform.

Health care is hard. On anything really. Republicans adamantly oppose everything that he does.

So Obama decided to govern alone, relying increasingly on executive orders.

“He ordered power plants to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by over 30% by 2030.”

[MUSIC] Increase the minimum wage for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. And unilaterally extended the deadline for the Obama care health insurance mandate. Republicans and Congress are predictably furious about this. The president has taken actions that he himself has said are those of a king or an emperor.

Not an American president. [MUSIC] There was one arena in which Obama flexed his presidential power by perhaps more dramatically than any other. [MUSIC]

Immigration. This is just one of those days that a lot of young people are going to remember for the rest of their lives. Obama announced DACA, deferred action for childhood arrivals by executive action. The Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people. [MUSIC]

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who had arrived as children could now defer deportation and work in the country legally. Previously, Obama had insisted he could not make such a massive move without Congress. I am not king, he said. [MUSIC]

But Congress had repeatedly failed to act. Critics accused Obama of illegally overriding existing immigration law. If you talk to constitutional scholars about DACA,

“there is a real fierce debate and I think some pretty strong arguments that this was policy.”

Under the guise of executive action. [MUSIC] But if Obama's actions seemed like an overreach, they proved to be small bore compared to what would come next. [MUSIC]

Donald Trump. The office of President of the United States. Trump made it clear in 2016, we're going to make America great again, that he had a big appetite for executive power. I alone can fix it.

[MUSIC] But Trump would need help if you wanted to maximize the power of his office. From a master bureaucrat and a self-described radical, Russell Vote. Washington has a spending problem. [MUSIC]

Vote has been the mastermind behind some of Trump's biggest power grabs, testing the limits of legality.

Vote was the one who laid the groundwork for this incredible display of executive power.

For years, Vote had believed that the president should be able to do whatever he wished with the federal bureaucracy, even though it is Congress that has the sole power to create agencies, structure them, and fund them. [MUSIC] Vote embraced the unitary executive theory that once fringe interpretation of the Constitution,

that gives the president absolute control over the executive branch, even in defiance of congressional laws. [MUSIC] That theory gave Vote a license to steal his critic say. When as the head of the office of management and budget in the first Trump term,

he refused to spend money that Congress had legally allocated. Congress is more or less no longer a co-equal branch of government.

“If the president has the ability to block the most important power given to Congress in the Constitution,”

the power of the person. [MUSIC] Do not worry, we are going to build the wall, okay, don't worry. [APPLAUSE] One of the first big tests of Vote's extra legal approach was the battle to build Trump's border wall.

[MUSIC] The fight between Trump and Congress over funding for the wall led to a then record 35-day government shutdown. [MUSIC]

When a bill did finally pass, Trump got over a billion dollars for steel fencing,

but he wanted more. The White House sees it really as a middle finger to president Trump. [MUSIC] Russell Vote helped come up with the solution, declare a national emergency at the border with Mexico. As a result, his office of management and budget simply took nearly four billion dollars

that was roughly assigned to the military's budget to fund the wall. There wasn't an emergency at the southern border in a way that justified declaring this kind of

[MUSIC]

“The move provoked anger on both sides of the eye.”

>> I believe this is unconstitutional. >> Vote later mock those who had stood in his way. >> President Trump had a bunch of people around him who were constantly sitting on eggs and saying, oh my gosh, he's getting me to violate the law. [MUSIC]

>> The border stunt was the canary in the coal mine for many presidential power grabs to come. [MUSIC] Vote championed the power of impoundment, which would let the president refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. >> He wants to shrink the size of government.

If a president can simply just not spend money on programs that Congress has funded, the size of government can shrink dramatically. [MUSIC]

“Congress had specifically outlawed the practice after Watergate, but vote didn't care.”

[MUSIC]

In 2019, he and Trump froze over $200 million in security assistance for Ukraine.

Allegedly to pressure President Volodomer Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden. The government accountability office said that with holding the aid broke the law. >> If Congress allocates money for a specific purpose, then the president just has to execute the law by spending that money on that purpose. Unless Congress has given him explicit discretion, he's got to do it.

>> Senate will convene as a court of impeachment. Trump was impeached for the whole Ukraine debacle. >> It did nothing wrong, but in the end, he was acquitted by a Republican majority Senate. >> Take away for Trump, and really for the whole system, was you can get away with this, and maybe it's actually not a violation of our constitutional principles.

Probably the single greatest expansion of his executive power that took place in Trump's first term

was doing that and getting away with it. >> For Trump and vote, the executive power grab was just beginning. >> I Donald John Trump, who's all on the square, Trump 2.0, is next. [MUSIC] >> I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the chasing life podcast.

“Last week, there was this important report that dropped that I think got a lot of attention.”

It's about football, and there was this new study in the British Medical Journal, which estimates that of all the NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. By 878 players, at least 25% of them had confirmed CTE. That is the disease that is caused by repetitive hits to the brain. So CNN's resident NFL veteran, Koi Wire, he called me, we called fellow CNN Sports Anchor Andy

Sholes, and we were talking about it. >> I know, as a former player, anytime I forget my keys. If I get a slight headache, it pops in my head. I'm thinking like, man, I hope this is just Andy, do you forget your keys? >> Rarely, I know.

>> Oh, dear folks, yes, all the time, Koi, maybe feel better. >> Listen to chasing life, streaming now. >> Revigate your podcasts. >> Late January of 2021 was a dark time at Mara Logo. Donald Trump had just left office in disgrace.

>> The president departs the White House for a final time this morning.

>> After a second impeachment.

House for a solution, 24, impeaching Donald John Trump president of the United States for high crimes and miscommunism. >> He was accused of inciting an insurrection to overturn an election. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. >> indictments loomed. Prison was possible. A second term was all about a pipe dream.

But Russell vote was planning for one. In an old townhouse in Washington, he had launched the center for renewing America. One of its top priorities, preparing the game plan for an unprecedented display of executive power. In both sides, the stakes could not have been higher. >> He talks in almost apocalyptic terms about the direction of the country.

>> In a remarkable essay in 2022, he declared we are living in a post-constitutional time. The left had thrown out the Constitution vote claimed because the left's woke and weaponized deep state bureaucracy was against the people. We are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover he warned. So the right needed to assert executive power over the bureaucracy

>> If you support the idea that the government is broken and the only thing they can fix it,

“is by bringing in a single imperial president, then anything is justified.”

Vote envisioned a president who would eliminate lawfully created government agencies. >> USAID officially shuts down. President Trump threatened the 45-year-old U.S. Department of Education. >> Use the Justice Department to openly prosecute political enemies. >> Federal grand jury indicted former FBI director James Komi.

>> And use the military to put down protests. >> One of the last things vote wanted his president to do was to worry about the law. >> This is going to be close to 500 miles by the time we finished.

>> Too many policies had been foiled in Trump's first term vote claimed because his lawyers said

you can't do that. I don't want President Trump having to lose a moment of time

“having fights in the oval office about whether something is legal or doable or moral.”

>> Vote's philosophy hawken back to President Nixon's approach to the rule of law. >> When the president doesn't, that means that it is not illegal. >> Vote wrote a chapter on executive power for project 2025. The conservative blueprint for a Trump restoration. It was so controversial during the campaign that Trump denied knowing anything about it.

>> I don't know what the hell it is, it's project 25. >> They're seriously extreme, but I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know anything about it. >> Meanwhile, the Democrats had four years to reign in executive power just as they did after Watergate, but did remarkably little.

>> My campaign for president, I made a commitment. >> President Joe Biden pushed the limits of power himself. Canceling roughly half a trillion dollars in student loan debt with an executive action. >> About 43 million people would qualify for loan cancelations. >> $300 billion is the amount of money that taxpayers will be on the hook for.

>> The Supreme Court halted Biden's measure, but then issued a monumental controversial decision.

>> Granting presidents executive power never before seen in American history.

>> All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen. In a case over whether Trump could face charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the court gave all presidents immunity from prosecution for any official presidential act. Placing them firmly above the rule of law. In a scathing descent, just a Sonya Sotomayor pointed out that a president could commit blatantly

criminal acts and face no charges. Orders the Navy seal team six to assassinate a political rival. Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold on to power. Immune. >> The president is now a king above the law she wrote. >> We will very quickly make America great again. >> Thank you very much.

>> Donald Trump won the 2024 election over 50 criminal charges against him would drop. >> Ending the weaponization of government. >> And from day one, Trump would follow Russell Votes game plan for the most powerful presidency since Nixon.

A super Imperial presidency. Never seen before.

Coming up. My closing thoughts on executive power. >> And now for some closing thoughts on this subject. Liberal democracy came out of the West before spreading to many parts of the world from Asia to Africa. But where and when did it begin. One plausible answer would be in 1215 in a matter on the banks of the River Thames, New Windsor Castle. That's where King John met barons and archbishop's

contesting his rule and issued magna Carter, which for the first time set formal limits on the King's power. That idea checks on the authority of the executive, lies at the heart of liberal democracy. At the heart of the West's distinctive contribution to the world.

“America played a crucial role in deepening this tradition.”

Many consider the first written constitution in the world to be the fundamental orders of Connecticut adopted

license plates. The fundamental orders advance the Western project of limiting executive power.

“It is that system that is now in danger. We can by the steady rise of presidential power in America”

since the Cold War. Expanded further by the war in terror and now transformed into an out-of-control beast under Donald Trump. As I've argued before, when you look at Western democracies today, the United States stands out. Populism has searched across much of the democratic world. Distrust of elites is widespread. Political rhetoric has grown more furious and personal, but America appears to have moved further down the path toward illiberal democracy,

a system in which elections remain, even as constitutional restraints

independent institutions and the rule of law are steadily hollowed out. The United States is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. That is why its slippage

“is so striking. Sweden's V-Demonstitute, which measures the condition of democracies around”

the globe, has described the erosion of American democracy as unprecedented in scale. In an earlier age, almost any one of the administration's actions would have triggered a national uproar, but now they come so fast and in so many spheres that shock has curdled into fatigue. We see threats and lawsuits directed against media companies, attempts to stifle law firms work with government agencies and even access to federal buildings, the use of the Justice Department

against political opponents, and the deployment of military forces within the United States. Some of these steps are defended as vigorous assertions of presidential authority, but almost no one could deny that their range, frequency and aggressiveness are extraordinary,

“certainly unlike anything in the half century since Watergate.”

Ironically, part of the problem lies in the very success of the American constitutional order, because it is endured for so long, Americans have come to assume that it does not merely work, but it needs no repair. Yet America's political framework dates back, not just a 1776, or even 1639, but to even earlier informal institutional arrangements, devised by English settlers in North America. It was a remarkably modern system for its time,

but that time was four centuries ago. Many other Western democracies, often drawing directly from the American example, later adapted and improved on it, especially after 1945. They created justice systems and electoral commissions, more insulated from day to day politics. In the United States by contrast, neither prosecutors nor elections are reliably protected from partisan pressures.

The same is too elsewhere in the system, since Watergate's strong norms developed against overed executive interference with law enforcement, but norms are only norms as the Trump administration has shown by breaking them with little consequence. Many democracies have found less politicized ways to choose judges and have imposed fixed terms on senior jurists. America has retained an openly partisan process for appointing federal judges, and then grants them life tenure.

In other words, other nations borrowed some of America's core insights, checks and balances, judicial review, constitutional limits on executive power, and then refine them in practice. As I've shared before, Steven Levitsky, one of the formal scholars of democratic collapse and the co-author of How Democracy's Die, once told me that perhaps the deepest cause of this institutional decay is that America has been so successful

for so long that it never felt much need to reform itself. It's a tourism and business as in life

that people learn less from success than from failure. America won the Cold War, led the information revolution, and remains by almost every material measure the most powerful country on earth. And so we have been slow to scrutinize our own system to recognize its weaknesses and to improve it. As Levitsky put it, American exceptionalism has blinded us to weaknesses in our constitutional and political system. Alongside this lack of introspection,

collapse or authoritarian rule he noted, in places like Poland and Brazil, generations know

“what it is like to have lost the rule of law and constitutional safeguards. But Republican leaders,”

business leaders, Supreme Court justices don't seem to think that we could actually watch democracy

decay and even die. This is America they seem to think. We're different. That failure of imagination

“is creating a complacency that might prove deadly. My thanks to all of you for watching this special”

hour I'm free to carry. In 2024 a man was killed by the FBI and to this day the authorities have refused to say why. He was a father and ex-husband and a Russian born American citizen. He just

“seemed like a lonely guy and he needed a friend and he kind of talked about death. He talked about”

you just never know when it's your time. I'm CNN investigative reporter Isabel Chapman,

host of the new limited series, civilian or spy. They noticed that he was communicating with people that were of concern to the FBI. Oh my god, Jesus. Head over to the CNN presents feed and listen to our three part series, civilian or spy. Available wherever you get your podcasts.