Let’s move on to after the election. No matter who wins, the next president will declare that he has a “mandate” to do something. And he would be wrong.
All the canard that the newly elected president for some reason has the right to have an inventive method. The word “mandate” does not appear in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers.
The myth can be traced back to Andrew Jackson. He shut down the Second Bank of the United States in part because he continued to do so — even though his campaign was almost entirely unrelated to the issue — but he relied more on the fact that he was “the people’s president.” Jackson introduces the argument that because the president is elected by the entire nation, his agenda has a unique legitimacy and urgency. This “represents a revolutionary change in the conceptualization of the basis of presidential power,” presidential historians Richard J. Ellis and Steven Kirk wrote, creating the idea that the president derives some extra-constitutional authority from his relationship with the people.
Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson – presidents I respect and despise – advanced this concept of the president as an avatar of the national will. Most famously in his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln invoked the logic and language of the Declaration of Independence to justify the Union’s victory and the emancipation of slaves and to maintain equality before the law as central to the American cause. Wilson just wanted to use unchecked power.
Supporters of the idea that the president is the sole instrument of the “will of the people” – sometimes called “plebiscitary mandate” – usually say that the president exceeds Congress because they support the national majority while the legislators only use narrow, sectarian ones. mandate from the district or state.
This is an anti-Constitutional, quasi-authoritarian, mystical codswallop.
The Constitution is very clear on this: Congress is the highest branch of government. They write laws, declare war, levy taxes, create most of the courts and executive agencies, and pay the salaries of officials. It can fire members of other branches, but other branches cannot fire members of Congress.
Congressional majorities – and thus congressional mandates – form on specific issues and interests as a result of deliberation and compromise. Or at least when Congress works.
Political scientist Julia R. Azari has identified two other theories of presidential supremacy: the “critical electoral” mandate and the “responsible party” mandate. The former states that some elections are points of inflection or realignment that signal popular approval for a new direction. Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that mandate in 1933. The latter said that if the candidate is open in the promise or explicit policy, the voters have the right to expect the government to send them.
These are real conceptual differences, but in terms of practical politics and constitutional legitimacy, they are just different tastes of the same nonsense.
Which brings me back to this election. Vice President Kamala Harris has been shrewdly opaque about her agenda; he has gone into more detail about the positions he no longer holds than the positions he does. When asked what he would do if elected, he often offered a salad of words and nostrums about bringing people together. Beyond opposing expanded abortion rights, the only credible claim to a mandate is not Donald Trump, who promises to deliver on “Day One.”
Trump also didn’t give many specifics, but some have been very controversial. Many supporters insist that they don’t mean it: Take it seriously, not literally, as they say. They will not send troops and police officers to drag the millions of immigrants who are here illegally from their homes, perhaps putting them in camps before being deported. They will not impose large tariffs, in place or sue political opponents to seek “retribution.”
But you can be sure that if he is elected, many Republicans will claim that he has the mandate to do this. It might help progressives who like the idea of ​​presidential mandates — when they win — see the problem with them.
But the core problem with mandate-mania is this: the majority of presidential elections never speak with one voice for a policy platform. In 2020, many people are voting against Trump is more than for Biden. Virtually no one voted for him to be the reincarnation of FDR, as a group of historians encouraged him to be, after he was elected. If the voters want it, Biden will campaign on it and the voters will vote the congressional majority they give to Roosevelt.
The presidential election is a job interview. The people the voters hire have only one real mandate: to do the job set forth by the Constitution.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
