SEPTEMBER 9, 2024 – Tuesday evening millions of Americans plus millions of people around the world will tune in to the “debate,” so-called, between the two main candidates for president of the United States. I’m not sure yet if I’ll tune in or not. On Monday evening in the company of my spouse, sister and brother-in-law, I was witness to a far grander spectacle, and given the weather forecast, Tuesday evening’s show (sun, moon, water and silhouetted shoreline) . . . on the lake . . . promises to be a carbon copy[1] of this evening’s display. I might have to opt out of the “debate” and opt in for watching nature’s grandeur.
I’ve written before about presidential “debates” and roundly criticized them—irrespective of who the “debaters” are—but the political peril in which we find ourselves warrants another burst of reproval.
If the format and substance of modern campaign “debates” are a far cry from the pinnacle of such face-offs—the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 (seven in all, between August and October of that year)—modern presidential “debates” are also a poor method by which to evaluate people running for the job of Chief Executive Officer of the United States of America.
What’s manifestly absent from the campaigns for president is a basic job description. This omission is a critical deficiency of presidential campaigns. How in the world can people vote for candidate A over candidate B or vice versa without a fundamental grasp of the position to which A and B aspire? If a news reporter nabbed random voters on the street and asked them, “What does the president do?” and “What can the president do?” the responses, I’m sure, would reveal a disturbing level of ignorance.
Given how most people talk—and by “people,” I mean voters as well as candidates—you’d think that the job of president is simply waving a wizard’s wand. Candidates are evaluated by how they are perceived as wand wavers, and predictably, candidates hold themselves out as exceptional wand wielders. In reality, however, the president works within a host of legal, constitutional, and political constraints. There is no magic wand.
Legalistically and constitutionally, the president does not and cannot legislate; cannot appropriate funds to build a wall, a bridge or a school; cannot raise or lower our taxes; cannot hand out guns or control them; cannot lower the fed funds rate or your mortgage rate; cannot double or cut in half the price of gas or bread. What the president can do—and does—is preside over a vast federal bureaucracy, all of which was authorized by legislation adopted by . . . surprise, surprise . . . the legislative branch of government, namely, Congress. The bureaucracy is overseen, directed, and managed by executives appointed by the president—subject to the Appointments Clause of the Constitution (i.e. advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.).
Sure, the president can and does “make law” by executive order, but executive orders must be within the bounds of authority granted ultimately by statute—again, adopted by the legislative branch.
In foreign affairs and military matters, the president has greater powers (authorization) than in domestic concerns. But even in these excepted arenas there are limits. Congress can grant or cut off military aid to Ukraine, for example. And as we saw last year, a single U.S. Senator managed to override the power of the presidency by holding up Senate consent to hundreds of military officer promotions approved by the Biden Administration.
When I hear Trump claim that he’ll “lower interest rates,” I see the magic wand effect: his supporters think he can, therefore, he thinks he can. Neither the candidate nor his supporters seem to know or care that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (established by legislation passed by Congress), not the president, sets the fed funds rate—which in turn, affects many other consumer and business borrowing rates. When I hear Harris say she’ll stop inflation by prohibiting “price gouging,” I see pretty much the same thing: a magic wand spreading pixie dust over the heads of her followers for the simple reason that they believe in pixie dust. “Price gouging” sounds as though it ought to be a big no-no, and outlawing a “big no-no” ought to be a “yes-yes,” right? But the devil is in the details, and the details include identifying the proper authority—assuming it exists, and if it doesn’t, procuring it by legislation passed by Congress, assuming it withstands potentially, litigation and appeals to the Supreme Court—the third branch of government. None of which, in the case of “price-gouging” establishes a clear nexus between inflation and “price-gouging,” however the latter might be defined.
In the Trump-Harris “debate,” none of the important details concerning presidential power and authority and the critical interplay between legislation, judicial review, and presidential initiative will be addressed. Nor will the critical roles of the president: appointing capable, competent, suitable people to preside over federal agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets and 10s of thousands of employees; appointing federal district court judges and appellate court justices; with the aid of agents and advisors expert in substance and in political processes, developing and “selling” a legislative agenda across a wide spectrum of issues important to all Americans; managing a broad range of crises, domestic and foreign, foreseeable and unforeseeable; and giving inspired and inspiring leadership to our allies and above all, to our 330 million people, be they rich or poor, Black or white, young or old, weak or strong, of one party or the other or of neither.
One of the candidates will “debate” by superlative-rich blather spewed forth like a loud, vibrating soap-bubble blowing machine. The other candidate will repeat well-rehearsed talking points focused mostly on policy but without explaining much of the “how”—especially if the Republicans hold the House and/or gain the Senate.
Filling the post-event media space will be endless chatter about who won and who lost the “debate.” Perhaps two or three minds will be changed, but little else on the game board will have been altered. And with just eight weeks to go, the country will lurch toward a choice like none we’ve ever seen repeated.
If I had a magic wand, I’d wave it—and waive the “debate” in favor of an “education” hour, explaining the role and responsibilities of the president of the United States and ending with this simple appeal:
“Now that you know, vote accordingly.”
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] For you who came of age in the 1990s or later, a “carbon copy,” is a reference to the kind of duplicate that pre-dated a “Xerox copy,’ which, after it became a “xerox copy,” was called a “photocopy,” before it was known as a “scanned copy.”
