Too Much Power in One Hand

How Unchecked Presidential Power Threatens American Democracy and What Real Leadership Looks Like Instead

Jul 04, 2025

There’s a disease spreading across the country. It’s not airborne, but it’s in the air. Not in your bloodstream, but all over your timeline. It’s not contagious in the traditional sense, but if your uncle starts quoting Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow like gospel at Thanksgiving, you know it’s already too late.

We call it Partisanism, but it’s bigger than politics. It’s a leadership rot. The kind that makes people defend power grabs because “their guy” is doing it. The kind that excuses chaos if the stock market’s up. Somewhere along the way, we stopped electing leaders and started crowning brands. Now we treat politics like fantasy football, and the presidency like it’s a throne up for grabs.

This isn’t a political rant. It’s a leadership red flag. Because if you hand someone too much power without accountability… at the jobsite, in the boardroom, or the Oval Office, don’t be surprised when they start acting like Caesar.

TL;DR

Why is the U.S. presidency so powerful now?
Because executive power has expanded unchecked for decades. Presidents now bypass Congress with executive orders, declare endless emergencies, and accumulate authority regardless of party affiliation while the public cheers for “results.”
How does executive overreach happen in the U.S.?
Through slow, steady scope creep. Each president inherits the unchecked tools of the last one and adds more emergency powers, war powers, and surveillance authority without real accountability or rollback.
What are the risks of giving presidents too much power?
Unchecked power doesn’t stay with your guy. It sets a precedent for the next leader, good or bad. If you wouldn’t trust your worst political enemy with that power, it shouldn’t exist.
What is the leadership lesson from America’s political dysfunction?
If your leadership style only works when your team’s in charge, it’s not leadership. It’s cheating.
What should real leadership look like in politics?
It should include built-in limits, shared decision-making, and the courage to say “enough.” Resilient leaders don’t just wield power. They restrain it for the good of the system.

Independent, Not Indifferent

It’s been a long time since you heard a political take that didn’t sound like a halftime speech for a team you’re not on.

Let me clarify something upfront: I’m not here to save the Republic. I’m just here to file a damage report while the while the storm is still surging.
I’m not left. I’m not right. I’m not even middle. I’m over here in the corner with a strong cup of coffee, a history book, and a rising sense of dread.

You don’t have to agree with me. Hell, I don’t always agree with me.
Some days I wake up and want to throw a tea party. Some days I wanna tax billionaires into oblivion. Most days I just want leaders who aren’t 108 years old and addicted to pretending they have all the answers.

So if you came here looking for tribal loyalty, I’ve got bad news and worse coffee.
But if you’re tired of playing mascot for people who don’t care about you until voting season… welcome.
You’re my people.

Before we dive in, let me clear something up: when I say I'm an Independent, I don’t mean I'm some neutral referee with a powdered wig and gavel. I’m not sipping herbal tea while contemplating “both sides.” I’m like Treebeard from Lord of the Rings: not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody’s altogether on mine.

What I care about… what I obsess over, is freedom. It's not just on my radar; it's the whole damn screen.

Character Counts

Let’s talk leadership.

Presidents are people. Human beings. And human beings come with flaws. Ego, insecurity, ambition, blind spots the size of the federal budget. That’s not new. That’s not even the problem.

The problem is what happens when the flaws aren't a bug, but the feature?

What happens when we elect a man who doesn’t just lack empathy… he resents it? What happens when the job of leading a free people lands in the lap of someone who confuses dominance with strength? Who sees cruelty as strategy? Who thinks humiliation is a leadership tool?

That should be a disqualifier. Period. Not a partisan dig. Not a hot take. A basic standard. If you're in charge of 330 million lives, including kids, nukes, veterans, and a global chessboard, the bare minimum ought to be: you actually give a damn about someone besides yourself.

And yet… we keep lowering the bar. Because some folks say, “Well, I like what he does.”

Yeah? I like what a pressure washer does, but I don’t wash my kids and pets with it.

This isn’t about Trump vs. Biden. That’s a bar fight. This is about a job… the American presidency, that has outgrown its leash. It's like we raised a Labrador and came back to find a wolf. The Constitution wasn’t built for celebrity strongmen with infinite Twitter fingers and zero shame. It was built to constrain power. But somewhere along the way, we stopped electing leaders and started crowning brands.

And now the office is too big, too powerful, and the men walking into it? Too small. Too fragile. Too self-obsessed.

So when I hear, “But he’s getting things done,” I get it. I like a functional government. I like action. But at what cost?

Where is your line?
What can’t your guy do?
Can he break laws if you like the results?
Can he tweet out Napoleon quotes about violating laws to save the country?
Can he joke about third terms and dictatorship so long as the stock market's up and gas is cheap?

Because history’s pretty clear on this: once you give power to a man who enjoys control more than service, you don’t get to take it back with a strongly worded letter.

You want hard knock leadership? Then hold every leader accountable. Because the second you bend the rules for your team, you’re not saving America. You’re burning the playbook.

The Job Has Outgrown the System

Let me ask you something:

Why is it that every modern president leaves office more powerful than the last?
Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t matter. They come in with ambition, they leave with more tools, more shortcuts, and fewer checks. It's like a project where each leader “borrows” a little flexibility and nobody ever puts the tools back in the tool box.

We’ve taken a system built in 1787 to prevent a king… and somehow, we've built a damn throne. George Washington walked away from power like a man on fire who wanted a bucket. Today? Presidents don’t walk away. They linger. They hint at third terms. They throw parties when judges they appointed block oversight.

Congress used to declare wars. Now presidents just send the missiles and send Congress the bill. Laws used to be passed by legislators. Now they're shaped with a Sharpie and called “executive orders.” And when someone raises their hand and says, “Wait, is this legal?”, we get a memo from a lawyer in the Executive Branch who says, “Sure it is… because I work for the guy doing it.”

And when the public finally blinks and notices what do we do? We slap on fig leaf of protocol. That’s the little polite fiction we tell ourselves: Don’t worry, everything’s fine, it’s all temporary, the system still works...

But here's the hard truth: fig leaves don’t stop power grabs. They just hide them.

They make us feel like the guardrails are still there when really, they’ve been torn off and replaced with caution tape. They give us the illusion of restraint while the engine of executive power revs louder and faster every term.

You want to talk about scope creep? Forget your jobsite… look at the Oval Office.

You want a leadership lesson? Here's one: every time we fail to challenge power, we train it to ignore us. That’s true in your office, in your family, in your company, and it’s damn sure true in government.

So next time a president, your guy or not, reaches a little too far and someone says, “That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” don’t roll your eyes. That’s not weakness. That’s the last safety valve in a system begging not to explode.

Because when fig leaves fall off… what’s underneath ain’t pretty.

Emergencies, Wartime, and the Myth of Temporary Power

Did you know the U.S. president, any president, can declare a national emergency and instantly gain access to over 120 special powers?

These aren’t just “call in FEMA” powers. We’re talking controlling communications, shutting down transportation, seizing private property, and yes… detaining people en masse. Some of these powers are so extreme they’ve never even been used. They just sit there, like a loaded weapon on the table, waiting for the right moment or the wrong president.

Now here’s where it gets dangerous:
When you combine emergency powers with a forever war like the War on Terror, you’ve got a loophole big enough to drive a free 747 max through.

A war with no borders, no timeline, no surrender ceremony… just an open-ended justification for the president to say, “We’re still at war, so I still need these powers.”

Let that sink in:
The president can declare the war.
The president can declare the emergency.
And the president gets the power… unchecked, and possibly unending.

The Constitution never intended this. The Founders fought a revolution to get rid of a monarch, not to draft up a how-to manual for one. They put Congress in charge of declaring war for a reason. But Congress? They've been missing in action since the Korean War. Folded like cheap lawn chairs under every president since Truman.

And here’s the kicker… we were warned. By the very FIRST Republican!

Abraham Lincoln, before he was even president, said it flat out: “If the same person who decides when we go to war is also the one who gains power from that war, you’ve built a throne, not a republic.”

That was in the 1840s. We didn’t listen. Now we’re living it.

So here’s your #HardKnockLesson: Leadership isn’t just about what you can do. It’s about what you shouldn’t.
Power without restraint isn’t strength. It’s rot.

And if you think your guy would never abuse those powers? Ask yourself: What happens when it’s not your guy?

When Should We Be Worried?

Let’s play a game.
Imagine every executive power Trump has right now and every power Biden had before him sitting in the hands of the politician you trust the least.
Maybe it's AOC. Maybe it's Marjorie Taylor Greene. Maybe it's the ghost of Richard Nixon riding in on a flaming Segway. I don’t care… just pick your nightmare candidate.

Now ask yourself:
Would you want them to have the power to declare war without Congress?
To detain citizens during a "national emergency" of their choosing?
To override laws with the stroke of a pen via executive order?
To use the military on domestic soil?
To shut down the press, seize property, monitor communications?

Are you sweating yet?

That’s the test. That’s the only test that matters. Because power doesn't stay with your guy. It moves. It expands. It outlives elections. Every loophole your favorite president exploits becomes a loaded weapon for the next one. That’s not leadership. That’s roulette.

And now… while we’re all arguing over yard signs and Twitter memes the people around Trump are out here joking about third terms, posting Napoleon memes that say “He who saves the country violates no laws”, and tossing around hand gestures that look a little too Axis of Evil cosplay for my taste.

You want to say it’s all a joke?
Cool. Then it’s a stupid one.
And when stupid gets access to nukes, the punchline has a blast radius.

I have OCD about freedom.
Because I’ve seen what happens when we hand too much power to people who think the Constitution is optional. Who treat laws like speed bumps. Who treat their opponents like enemies of the state.

A Historian Called It in 2010

Let me dust off a book from 2010; Bruce Ackerman’s The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. It reads less like a political science book and more like a playbook for what we’re living through. 5 years before Trump even ran for office, Bruce Ackerman saw the storm coming.

He warned that our system was setting the stage for a new kind of president. Not a seasoned statesman, but a charismatic outsider with no meaningful checks from their own party. Sound familiar?

He saw the rise of the media-fed cult of personality, where consultants and cable news create an echo chamber, and loyalty matters more than competence.

He predicted presidents would bypass Congress entirely, governing by executive order, not legislation. That we’d normalize emergency powers not just for hurricanes or terror threats, but to reshape the country wholesale.

And maybe most chilling, he called out the rise of what he dubbed rubber-stamp lawyers; legal scholars who don’t advise the president on what’s legal, but invent legal excuses for whatever the president wants to do.

That was four presidents ago. And here we are, sleepwalking through it.

This isn’t prophecy… it’s a #HardKnockLesson in what happens when we ignore the system’s pressure cracks until the whole damn thing gives.

CLOSING: Get Your Own Flag

If you like the idea of a Caesar… if you're dreaming of a Vladimir Putin-style American president who consolidates all power into one man, then do me a favor: get your own damn flag.

Don’t fly mine while you’re cheering for autocracy.

I don’t believe any quotes I see anymore. It’s all fake news. But they say Thomas Jefferson was asked what kind of government we have and he replied, “A republic if you can keep it.”

The flag I pledge to represents a republic. One designed to disperse power, not hoard it. A system that only works if we work to keep it working. And right now, that system is fraying. It’s certainly looking a whole lot more like a corporate oligarchy to me.

The Founders gave us a triangle of checks and balances. But one corner, Congress, has collapsed into cowardice and culture war cosplay. The courts are under siege from both sides, and the presidency is growing like constitutional kudzu, choking everything it touches.

So here’s the real test of your leadership chops… not whether you like what your guy is doing today, but whether you’re willing to rein in the power you like before it’s used by someone you hate.

Because if your “team” needs unchecked power, emergency orders, and cult behavior to win, you’re not playing the game. You’re rigging it. And if you're rigging the game, you’ve already lost the Republic.

We don’t need Caesars. We need grownups. And the job of a grownup isn’t to worship power. It’s to limit it.

This system, this republic, only works if we keep it.

The real question isn’t “Do you like what your guy is doing?”

It’s: “What happens when it’s not your guy?”

And by the time we answer that, it might be too late.

🔥 #HardKnockLesson:

If you can’t imagine giving your worst enemy the power you're handing your favorite politician… then stop handing it over.

#HardKnockLessons
#HardKnockUniversity

Previously on Hard Knock University Dispatch:

Frackin’ Dry: How Texas Dug Itself a Watery Grave

Mark Caples

Jun 24

Frackin’ Dry: How Texas Dug Itself a Watery Grave

It’s summer time and the Texas sun isn’t just hot. It’s punishing. Five years of relentless drought have turned once-lush pastures into brittle, brown husks. Cracked earth stretches for miles, and lakes that used to shimmer with weekend boats now sit like dust bowls, dotted with the skeletons of old docks and sun-bleached “No Swimming” signs.

Read full story

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