Imperial Ambitions: The Rise of Presidential Power

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Fareed Zakaria** (1:05)
Three years after he resigned from office, Richard Nixon gave an interview to the British journalist David Frost and made a striking observation.

**David Frost** (1:14)
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.

**Richard Nixon** (1:30)
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

**David Frost** (1:33)
By definition.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:35)
Exactly, exactly.

**Fareed Zakaria** (1:37)
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 its crucial weakness, the extraordinary potential power of the president. The Department of Justice technically works for the president. It is part of the executive branch.
And as commander-in-chief, he has vast scope to define acts in the best interests of the nation.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:22)
The meeting will come to order. This is non-debatable.

**Fareed Zakaria** (2:25)
The Constitution's real check on the president.

**Richard Nixon** (2:29)
What did the president know, and when did he know it?

**Fareed Zakaria** (2:34)
The impeachment is a political process, not a legal one.

**Richard Nixon** (2:40)
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

**Fareed Zakaria** (2:44)
With removal from office requiring a conviction voted by two-thirds of the US. Senate, few presidents have navigated these realities better than President Donald Trump. After two impeachments, four indictments, and a guilty verdict, Congratulations, Mr. Trump. Trump was elected president once again.
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.
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.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:12)
The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of Biden executive actions.

**Donald Trump** (4:19)
Could you imagine Biden doing this? I don't think so.

**Fareed Zakaria** (4:23)
But Trump is actually the culmination of a long story. 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-autocrat. To understand, we need to go back and tell the story of the imperial presidency.
Welcome to a special report on presidential power. I'm Fareed Zakaria. In 1973, the famous historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published a book called The Imperial Presidency, an instant classic.
It was the height of the Watergate scandal, when presidential power had reached disturbing new levels. Schlesinger argued that Richard Nixon's abuses of power were singular and egregious. 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. And this is exactly what America's founders feared the most. America's Constitutional Convention was held in secret, so that the founders could debate and speak freely. But a leak from the proceedings to a local newspaper made one thing clear. It said, we never once thought of a king.
The founders detested monarchy, having risked their lives to defeat one. So far as we approve of monarchy, the revolutionary Thomas Bain wrote, in America, the law is king. The nation's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, actually had no executive branch at all.