The Left’s Hypocrisy About the ‘Imperial Presidency’ – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

In Federalist 70, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks. It is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws, to the protection of property … [and] to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.”

Liberal scholars and observers quote Hamilton approvingly when liberal Democrats occupy the White House. When, however, conservative Republicans exercise executive power with the zeal of a Hamiltonian, the left screams “imperial presidency.” They are doing that now with Donald Trump in the White House.

“Trump,” Doyle McManus writes, “is creating an imperial presidency.” The Economist tells us that with Trump’s election in 2024, America has “an imperialist president for the first time in over a century.” The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward told MSNBC shortly after the 2024 election that Trump appeared to “be trying to recreate the ‘imperial presidency.’” The Washington Monthly headlined an anti-Trump column by James Zirin, “Trump’s Imperial Presidency.” Edward Luce in the Financial Times writes that one of Trump’s goals is to “recreate the imperial presidency that was buried in the mid-1970s after Richard Nixon’s resignation.”

The reference to Nixon is no accident. In 1973, Kennedy court historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a book titled The Imperial Presidency, which decried President Nixon’s quest for presidential supremacy and labeled it a danger to the republic. Schlesinger, of course, praised energy in the executive branch when it flowed from the likes of Democrats such as Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

It didn’t matter that Schlesinger’s hero presidents forcibly removed native Americans from their lands (Jackson), ordered the internment of more than 100,000 innocent American residents of Japanese ancestry (FDR), used the IRS to harass political opponents (FDR and Kennedy), and ordered and abetted the assassination of heads of foreign governments (Kennedy — Castro in Cuba and Diem in Vietnam). Today’s critics of Trump as an “imperial president” are standing on the liberal shoulders of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Today’s critics of Trump’s energetic first month of his second term also resemble the liberal bias of the late presidential scholar James David Barber, whose book The Presidential Character was lionized by university professors and presidency “experts,” who were attracted by Barber’s alleged “scientific” typology that predictably favored liberal presidents. As a young political science student at the University of Scranton in the late 1970s, I was subjected to Barber’s book with its psychological assessment of 20th-century presidents and their personalities, except Theodore Roosevelt, who Barber was unable or unwilling to fit into his ridiculous categories.

Barber categorized the presidents from Taft to Nixon as “active-positive,” “active-negative,” “passive-positive,” and “passive-negative.” The “active-positive” presidents were, in Barber’s view, the most effective and admirable (and liberal) executives: FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. The “active-negative” and least effective and admirable presidents were Wilson (liberal but racist), Hoover, Johnson (liberal but Vietnam), and Nixon. The “passive-positive” presidents were Coolidge and Eisenhower — passive because they were not liberal enough. The “passive-negative” presidents were Taft and Harding.

In later editions, Barber placed Carter and Ford (surprisingly) in the “active-positive” category and Reagan in the “passive-positive” group. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times’ review called it an “important and often inspired book.”  My liberal political science professor treated it as gospel.

My guess is that Barber would place Trump in the “active-negative” category. Trump’s personality and governing style are as active as FDR’s, Truman’s, or Kennedy’s. Barber would see him as “negative” because he does not pursue liberal policies. And Schlesinger would likely devote a whole new chapter of The Imperial Presidency to Trump, likely judging him to be even a greater threat to our republic than was Nixon.

Yet, Donald Trump has not, by executive order, forcibly removed an entire race of people from their homes and placed them in reservations and internment camps, like Jackson and FDR did. Trump never used the IRS against his political opponents like FDR and Kennedy did. Trump didn’t appoint his brother as attorney general to cover up his infidelities and amphetamine use (“Dr. Feelgood”) like Kennedy did. And Trump didn’t order and abet the assassination of foreign leaders like Kennedy did.

Before those on the left criticize the “speck” in Trump’s eye as an “imperial president,” they need, as the Bible says, “to notice the beam in [their] own eye.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

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