The Mystique of an Unbreached Republic

There's nothing quite like the unfiltered view of politics you can get through the Internet. No other medium lets you see how people actually feel about things better. Views brushed aside by the mainstream as inconsequential are loud and seemingly rampant online. The discourse can get a little crazy, but so can politics. One of the more fascinating trends I noticed online last year during the election was how paranoid some people were about the transfer of power from President Bush to his successor, especially when Barack Obama emerged as the leading presidential candidate. Bear in mind we've had an awful lot of peaceful transfers of power in the United States -- it's not like every now and then we elect some stick in the mud who refuses to vacate the office when he's voted out. It just hasn't happened, not even in times of crisis. Nonetheless, some of the Founding Fathers were extremely concerned that that just might occur, that a dictatorship would take the place of the democratic republic they were creating. I love the fact that there are people who are still concerned about the prospect of a dictator emerging despite America's history to this point...it's not like it's impossible for it to occur. Dictators have indeed been the death of many a democracy; just imagine how different Africa's modern political history might have been had its nations experienced more peaceful transitions of power.

Anyway, there were two main conspiracy theories I noticed emerging during the election. The first was that George W. Bush would NOT leave office. I think history will remember Bush as a not untypical wartime president in that he did trample on individual liberties (Lincoln and FDR did as well), but trampling on individual liberties is something dictators also do a lot of. The fear was that despite the election Bush would declare a state of emergency, hold on to power, and rule the country as president for life, perhaps in the name of fighting terrorism. The second theory emerged strongly once Barack Obama started dominating the polls. Suddenly people started to fear that, if elected, Obama would declare martial law and emerge as a tyrant like America had never seen before. Now, you might well wonder what Obama had done during the campaign or as a senator to incite such fear, but, to be perfectly honest, we should probably be afraid that any president we elect might try to do something of the kind no matter how cherub-faced their visage. So far, at least, these two conspiracy theories seem to have been without merit. The transfer of power went smoothly, George Bush trotted merrily off to Texas, and Barack Obama began the struggle of getting his agenda enacted. It's been business as usual so far -- no power grabs, no tyranny established. We can all breathe a sigh of relief...for now.

It's an interesting question, though: why hasn't America had a tyrant yet? The obvious answer might seem to be the firm foundation of the American republic. The balance of powers among the three branches of government is designed to prevent a single all-powerful leader from emerging. However, I think it's indisputable that we've had presidents who have overstepped their powers. From John Adams' attempts to silence political opposition to Andrew Jackson's support of Georgia over the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia to FDR's unprecedented expansion of government intrusion into individual Americans' lives, we've had a lot of "strong presidents" who wielded power all too freely at times. Not one of them was a tyrant, though. Not one dissolved America's fundamental institutions or rewrote the Constitution to suit their whims. FDR did seem to be basically president for life, given that he was in office for longer than any other president and even died in office, but he was really popular and as far as I know won each of his elections fair and square. The checks and balances proscribed in the Constitution undoubtedly make it harder for a dictator to emerge, but I definitely don't think they are the only reason we haven't had one, especially considering how hard it's been to impeach presidents once they are elected. The fact that the United States is a well-armed nation with gun rights protected under the 2nd Amendment also makes establishing a tyranny more difficult, though I don't think it answers the question entirely either...after all, a popular dictator would have a lot of people with guns on his side as well.

Instead, I would say that the main reason America hasn't been ruled by a dictator yet is deceptively simple: no one in a strong enough position to try to seize that power has really wanted to do so. This doesn't mean that all our prominent political figures were saintly people, of course -- some might well have liked the idea of absolute power but just not wanted to risk everything to seize it. Still, I think there's a reason people generally don't grow up wanting to become the dictator of America. Simply put, if America ever has a dictator, it will cease to be America -- the United States is a very strange country in that our particular political system is uniquely tied to our identity. We're not like the Roman Republic, which acknowledged that dictators had their uses in times of crisis. For Americans, having a dictator in charge would be like the end of the country, the death of America. Dictators typically come to power much like democratically elected leaders, with promises of glorious days ahead. An American dictator couldn't say, "Well, I know I just killed America and all, but things are going to turn out GREAT for us!" When politicians in the United States want more power, they take it surreptitiously whilst piously proclaiming devotion to liberty.