Caleb Spare

I do have to point out here that while Trump's restructuring of America around a supreme presidency is more extreme than everything we've ever seen in our lifetimes, it's not an aberration. If anything, it's the logical conclusion of decades of Congress declining in power, as dysfunction has made it unable to do its basic job. Even before Trump, we have seen decades of both the President and the Supreme Court stepping in and basically assuming more and more indirect legislative powers because Congress is too partisan and gridlocked to pass major legislation anymore. Our lawmakers are constantly locked in petty squabbles. They mostly just pass overbloated omnibus bills that do a thousand little things for each special interest and nothing of consequence for the people. Half of all the new senators and congressmen these days seem to retire after one or two terms not out of some principled self-term-limiting, but out of a soul-crushing realization that nothing they're doing matters. It's not hard to understand why there's a certain group of voters that likes the idea of a president who just steps in and declares, I'll get this done since no one else is doing it. It's the same reason that in the late Roman Republic, plenty of the citizenry were excited about the country being reorganized as the Roman Empire. Because the system was so clearly broken that one guy just stepping in and getting things done seemed like a breath of fresh air.