From Ian Tuttle at National Review Why There Is No Serious Third-Party Alternative This Year

If there is any lesson to take from this present disaster, surely it is that the place of the presidency in American life has grown too large. It has taken calm, rational human beings and turned them into fanatics; it has turned dispassionate observers into cultists. And we do desperately need Congress to reassert its role restricting the executive, and to devolve the powers that have been more and more centralized by higher and higher offices back to state, regional, and municipal governments.

But it is the case even now, after a century spent increasing the authority — including the extra-constitutional authority — of the president, that no occupant of the Oval Office is likely to be able to wreak the havoc that either side fears. Hillary Clinton will not ban handgun ownership. Donald Trump will not nuke Beijing. There are constitutional and institutional and bureaucratic and (yes) moral checks that are still likely to stay even the most muscular strong-arm.

Of course, it would be best if we did not have to put those checks to the test at all. Far more agreeable would be a quiet, do-nothing president, a president on whom very little depended. This year’s fiasco should encourage both sides to work toward that end. The belief that the country lives and dies on the shoulders of the president only makes it more likely that it will.

HKO

Perhaps the silver lining in this depressing choice will be a reversal of the trend to make the President more powerful.

print