The checks and balances which the Constitution built into the structure of the government are designed to slow the process of legislation. This was conceived as a safeguard to protect the people from the government.
There is a natural temptation to want a strong government. It is assumed that a strong government could and would quickly address and fix problems and crises.
Yet there is great danger in a strong government. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” In other words, the government can only do things for you in proportion to what it can do to you.
A weak government is the surest way to protect individual political liberty and personal freedom. But protecting freedom and liberty was not among Obama’s goals. As historian David Limbaugh wrote in 2012:
President Obama has repeatedly revealed his impatience with our Constitution’s separation of powers and its checks and balances, lamenting that democracy is sometimes messy and frustrating. He just wants the other branches to get out of his way, because he can’t allow a silly inconvenience like the Constitution to obstruct his utopian vision for America.
Obama subjected the nation to great risks: shortcutting constitutional processes in one circumstance would allow eventually for shortcutting them in other circumstances. Eventually, due process and equal standing before the law would be endangered.
It is telling that many of the voters who elected Obama in 2008 and 2012 were the voters who chose to vote for President Trump in 2016. This was a telling rejection of Obama’s methods by the very electorate who placed him into the White House in the first place.
