The Progressive Presidency Envelops American Politics 

For better and for worse, the progressive conception of executive power has become almost definitive for the presidency in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We judge presidents by their grand actions, their command of politics, and how they shape opinion with rhetoric and gestures. They tell us they feel our pain as we boldly move forward together to claim the unruly future. President Trump has even suggested that our children’s Christmas presents are part of his prerogative. For all this, the American people welcome strident presidents, only turning on them under certain conditions, which are themselves notable. The rulemaking authority that has accumulated in the executive branch in generous transfers of power by Congress since Woodrow Wilson’s groundbreaking progressive presidency now makes it more formidable than it has ever been. 

All of this is happening, with only the vaguest of directions from Congress, the branch of government that the Constitution easily accords the widest berth of powers. We seem destined to live out the folly that Publius warned about when he defined tyranny in The Federalist as the combination of legislative, executive, and judicial power in one set of hands. 

Progressive constitutionalism finds its objectives in egalitarian social and economic change, aggressive regulation of business, a vast bureaucratic sector, and, most importantly, an executive who leads the people to accept the changes foisted on them in the name of progress. This unbalanced form of government breaks down under the weight of menacing events, emergencies, or forecasts that lead Americans of any belief to look to the federal government for direction and competence. 

One does not need to revisit the drastic consequences that ensued from COVID-19 policies to be reminded of the failures and mistakes of the progressive constitutional framework that issued them. The flawed public health regime changed the direction of the nation’s politics. Who now speaks with admiration of masking, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates? Authority and confidence have been stripped from the federal health bureaucracy, the public companies that constitute “Big Pharma,” and the politicians who supported drastic COVID-19 health measures. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw reactive policies, backed by “science” and rationalism. Rather than progress, science, and competent administration in a crisis, we saw a government collaborate with social media companies to censor, through fear, just criticism of its policies by leading scientists and medical academics. What is strikingly clear upon reflection on those policies is how rooted they were in the progressive constitutional framework and its ethos. Consider which branch of government imposed the business and school shutdowns, the limited permissions given to “essential jobs,” the vaccine mandates, the seemingly absurd regimen of handwashing, social distancing, and masking, and the closures even of public parks and open spaces. These policies were imposed on civil society by executives, governors, mayors, county administrators, and other executive branch officials. 

One of the most critical aspects of the old Constitution that progressives rejected, apart from federalism, the separation of powers, and the notion of any limits on government, was congressional deliberation. Congress was parochial, tied to the numerous regional ideas, prejudices, and interests of each part of the country, thus preventing a new national ideology from emerging. Deliberation at the congressional level did not yield the truth, but rather a thousand unfounded, petty notions. Only the president could outshine them as the only truly national elected representative, according to early twentieth-century progressives. 

But deliberation is how representative bodies take opinions, sentiments, rumors, and murmurs from the public and transform them into an acceptable form of public policy that can be approved by the represented citizens, precisely because they can see some measure of themselves in the result. In this crucial instance, to cite one prominent source of discomfort, many did not understand why their children were not in school, given that the disease, by virtually every measure, posed minimal risk to children. While governors or state secretaries of education had mandated such closures, no one with public authority spoke up for those who dissented. 

How many states or localities featured debates in their legislatures or city councils where representatives had to weigh the adverse consequences of comprehensively shutting down public, private, commercial, and educational institutions of society against the spread of COVID? The lack of debate in representative bodies meant that those who rightly could point to data showing that the disease’s most severe effects were limited to the elderly, the obese, and those with compromised immune systems could not be heard. Those arguments clearly pointed to more lenient public health restrictions in jurisdictions that were heavy-handed in their approach. When contrasting arguments cannot be responsibly made and assessed, another form of public discourse is born. And so, it was. 

Government by executive cannot, by its very design, engage in public deliberation. The excellences of executive power are decisiveness, unity, and speed, among others. But these qualities cannot eradicate the ill effects of flawed policies, which do not adequately address the specific set of problems. A more dangerous effect of this type of governance is that the executive level cannot properly receive, measure, and formulate ideas provided by the public in the construction of policy. That’s what legislatures do. 

All of this has accustomed us to public power and the diminution of civil society. The crucial theoretical position of progressive constitutionalism is the concentration of policymaking authority in the executive branch of government, so that the executive can represent the entire nation and lead it to new heights of consciousness and change. This position intrinsically mocks the founders’ constitutionalism as incompetent, even naïve in its belief that power should be divided and separated to ensure that multiple branches and levels of government compete and jostle to ultimately contribute to the formation of policy. 

Much of Congress’s authority has already been delegated to the executive branch to make policy under such conditions. As economist, historian, and social policy expert Thomas Sowell has warned us, progressives have long labored under the belief that their “anointed” vision is the path to progress. History has also taught us that power, cronyism, influence-seeking, and coercion are inevitable destination points when formidable constitutional institutions do not, or cannot, limit power. The COVID-19 pandemic is but one example of the government’s flexing its power, notably, by pushing a vaccine on many Americans who didn’t want it. 

Today, this discussion brings us to the dominant ethos of the Trump administration, which seeks to govern the country with a heavy hand. Has the Trump administration fallen prey to the vices of progressive presidential power? Many of its chief policymakers seem to labor under the major premise that we are in an “emergency” situation, caused by progressive policies that have waged war against the American people. Add to that the minor premise that Congress itself is moribund. The administration seems to operate under the premise that we are stuck in the deep channel of progressive constitutionalism. Those who believe in these premises conclude that any attempt to change the shape of this country must come from presidential leadership alone. Government by executive is the only real possibility for saving our nation and bringing it back to what the founders intended. It’s a position that is hard to disagree with. 

At the same time, new-right and post–liberal theorists are attempting to distance the American right from its long-held position that the administrative state should be reduced in power. Their ideas now seem to be charting the course for the Trump administration. For example, as many readers of Public Discourse will recognize, Patrick Deneen, a critic of the American founding’s natural rights philosophy, advocates in his recent book Regime Change that the power of government should be used to forge the few and the many into one class. The new position, one that many of us are watching to see if the Trump administration adopts, consists in using the administrative state’s powers to build an ethos in government that could redirect American society in a more culturally traditional and left-of-center economic direction. The government shouldn’t be smaller, but instead deployed for the many, for the working class, who it is presumed welcome this shift in federal rulemaking toward a more active government and managed economy in pursuit of traditional social norms.  

But if that palpable desire exists in working-class constituencies, it seems the policies to meet that concern should be formulated in the legislature rather than the executive branch. The rush to implement them through the administrative state might overlook the more complex reality, which is that many of these voters crossed over to the GOP because they sought economic growth. It’s interesting to note that much of what Republican voters continue to tell pollsters today is that, while they voted Republican, they don’t necessarily support the Trump administration’s policies regarding, for instance, tariffs, industrial and family policies, and now price controls. This same arm of government can punish enemies and reward friends, a principle that is at play in certain respects in the Trump administration. Senator Vance periodically expressed support for this position. Again, one is hard-pressed not to sympathize with this situation.  

Two distinctions are needed here. The Trump administration is correct in its efforts to reshape and reclaim presidential authority over the administrative state. We have not seen a Republican president even attempt to stem and reorient the administrative state’s powers in the manner that Trump is doing.  

The Trump administration’s executive orders prohibiting the use of affirmative action, DEI, and disparate impact practices inside the federal government, along with the order on transgenderism, should receive similar plaudits from members of the reality-based community that wants to restore the dignity of the human person to proper prominence in the law. The advanced decay that is occurring in certain institutions of society, which the executive branch regulates through the administrative state, validates the use of executive power in new, more aggressive directions for a Republican president. Higher education, whose institutions have been led by the modern left for decades, now features students and faculty engaging in vile rhetoric and protests against Israel, Jewish students, and their own country. That much of this is happening at so-called elite universities, which have legal and ethical responsibilities to this country, demands a forceful government response. 

The Trump administration’s suspension, if not elimination, of federal grants to these universities is needed. This attempt to change the culture of higher education away from rewarding and coddling terrorist sympathizers and anti-Semitic, anti-American students and faculty must be done for the sake of the nation’s broader culture. 

Yet, we must also keep in mind another distinction—one that the Trump administration has already learned from the sharply limited success of DOGE’s retrenchment efforts and its inability to eliminate the Department of Education without congressional authorization. The executive branch does not exclusively run the country, as it rightly governs one part of the government. Moreover, it should not seek to exercise power as if the separation of powers means the separation of any branch from being able to exercise its constitutionally appointed powers in the fulfillment of its duties when those conflict with administration priorities. In its insistence in federal court that it can deport anyone on American soil, even an American citizen, the administration has come perilously close to this position already with the federal judiciary. This undermines the Trump administration in the eyes of courts at a time when it will need their respect and judgment in the many battles it faces. 

Today, aspects of what is happening in the Trump administration bring us back to how executive branch officials managed their power during the COVID pandemic. They too operated under what were believed to be emergency conditions, where nothing could be spared when addressing the crisis. This led to unlawful dispensations regarding student loans, rent moratoria, vaccine mandates, antiracist economic programs, and coercion of corporations regarding speech and business practices, among other notable developments. COVID itself seemed to confirm to progressives that nothing limited their power and their ideas for transforming the country on various fronts. Look at the results.

We should recover the unwritten premise of the founders’ constitutionalism: when man and power are joined without constraints that limit the use of government authority, the result is a mess. Humans are inherently flawed but also oriented to the good. Constitutional authority is premised on channeling and checking public officials’ power. Believing in visions of the anointed, from whomever they supposedly issue, is a fool’s errand. We seem destined to relearn this lesson again and again.   

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