War and the Rogue Presidency: Restoring the Republic after Congressional Failure

by Ivan Eland

Overview

In War and the Rogue Presidency, Ivan Eland shows that almost immediately after the nation's founding, starting with the first presidency of George Washington, the executive's role in defense and foreign policy began expanding past what the framers of the Constitution had envisioned. The Constitution enshrined Congress as the dominant branch of government, giving Congress, not the President, most of the powers in defense and foreign policy. This comprehensive book shows how the presidential aggrandizement of greater powers has only been possible because of congressional abdication. However, this expansion of the executive's role was still relatively contained until the Cold War when undeclared, permanent war became ongoing policy, and then the post-9/11 war on terror dramatically expanded the President's role. Such expansion has had deleterious effects on U.S. foreign policy abroad, as well as a major erosion of the republic, its security at home, and the liberties of American citizens.

War and the Rogue Presidency is an in-depth examination of the history of the congressional-executive tug-of-war over U.S. security policy and why reclaiming constitutional standards is essential to restore both an effective national defense and civil and economic liberties. To get Congress to do that, Dr. Eland presents ways in which internal congressional incentives could be changed to provide motivation for legislative push-back. As a result, the book suggests important actions Congress could take for such a push-back along with other reforms that would effectively rein in the rogue presidency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598133257
Publisher:	Independent Institute, The
Publication date:	12/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent fifteen years working for Congress on national security issues. He is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an MBA in applied economics and a PhD in Public Policy from George Washington University. His popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Dallas Morning News, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Times. He is the author of Partitioning for Peace, Recarving Rushmore, The Empire Has No Clothes.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Constitutional Mandates for Defense and Foreign Policy

MUCH OF CURRENT popular writing on, media coverage about, and public expectations of presidents and the presidency implicitly accept the evolved role of the office into the most powerful of the five sectors of government in America (the executive, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the states). Nowadays, the president is not only expected to act as commander in chief of the country, but also perform other expansive functions, such as party leader, legislator in chief to get his program through Congress, and even consoler in chief when a natural or human-induced disaster reaches a certain level of loss. Yet at the dawn of the republic, the framers of the Constitution saw the president's limited roles only as defending the country from foreign attacks and executing domestic laws.

The dominant view among constitutional scholars is that post–World War II presidents have usurped vastly more power in foreign policy than the framers of the Constitution had envisioned. For example, according to Francis D. Wormuth and Edwin B. Firmage, "Articles I and II of the Constitution reveal the intent of the framers to give Congress the dominant hand in the establishment of basic policy regarding foreign relations." Similarly, John Hart Ely notes that "The Constitution gives the president no general right to make foreign policy. Quite the contrary[:] virtually every substantive constitutional power touching on foreign affairs is vested in Congress." Let us delve into the specifics of the founders' original concept.

The Constitution Made Congress Dominant, Even in Defense and Foreign Policy

During the colonial period and early in the American Revolution, with King George III and his powerful colonial governors in mind, colonists were concerned mainly about excesses of executive power. Thus, during the revolution, republican George Washington largely followed the Continental Congress's direction of the war.

The first American national government — the Articles of Confederation — had no executive; under new state constitutions drafted after the Declaration of Independence during the Revolution, the first state governments had strong legislatures and weak executives. Thus, later in the Revolution and just after it, concern was raised on the national level about not having a strong enough executive to effectively conduct war, to respond to insurrections like Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787, and to avoid being put at a disadvantage in commercial disputes with foreign nations. On the state level, concern was raised about "legislative tyranny," with unconstrained legislative bodies persecuting dissenters, canceling debt, and redistributing wealth.

From 1781 to 1789, under the Articles, the Confederation had to get nine of thirteen states to agree to pass legislation, make war, approve foreign treaties, and manage the confederation — all when surrounded by British power in Canada; Spanish forces controlling Florida, New Orleans, Mexico, and Cuba; and restive Native American nations in the middle of the continent that did not want their land stolen by American settlers. Under the Articles, Congress handled such foreign affairs, but with some deficiencies. The Constitutional Convention was called in 1787 to strengthen the central government — with a Revolutionary-era wariness of a strong executive (some delegates initially didn't want any executive and some wanted plural executives to dilute any person's power). However, the expectation was that any new legislative body would be the dominant branch of government and would therefore also need to be constrained. What resulted was a messy compromise Constitution, which was only later provided an overall vision by The Federalist Papers to attempt to win ratification in one state: New York. The Constitution did not provide for the total separation of powers among government branches (as commonly believed), but separated those institutions and directed them to share some key powers.

At the Constitutional Convention, the framers came very close to creating a full parliamentary system in which the majority party in Congress would always select the president. Although an independently selected president is justified in The Federalist Papers as a method of preventing legislative tyranny, the long-stalemated framers, hurrying to end the convention, only enshrined the independently selected executive in the Constitution when they couldn't agree on anything better. And even then, in the method of presidential selection, the Electoral College, in most cases was supposed to merely nominate presidential candidates for ultimate election by the House of Representatives.

An examination of the text of the Constitution, and the debates at the Constitutional Convention surrounding the document's adoption, show that most of the limited, enumerated powers of the new federal government — including those in defense and foreign policy — were allocated to the houses of Congress, not the chief executive. For starters, as the Constitution's framers envisioned the system, the House of Representatives would in most cases elect the president, making the chief executive's job security ultimately dependent on the people's house. The framers expected that, with such a physically large country and limited public education and knowledge of candidates, prospective officeholders would be able to get an outright majority in the Electoral College only rarely; thus, they envisioned that the electors in the Electoral College would only nominate candidates for final election by the House. Even the Electoral College was a compromise between those who wanted direct election of the president by the people and those who feared an excessively powerful president, elected by the unwashed masses, and instead wanted an executive selected legislatively. In most cases, the electoral process would be a hybrid indirect system of House election with nominations provided by the Electoral College — a compromise closer to the latter camp than the former camp. The American constitutional framers were aristocrats who feared that the democratic masses, controlling the political system, would take away their wealth.

In fact, what independence the framers allowed the president — for example, a limited veto over congressionally passed legislation — was given to the office as a check on the expected robust power of both houses of Congress. Even the name of the office — at the time, "president" (one who merely presided over the execution of Congress's will) implied much less power than "governor" (one who governed) — indicated modesty in responsibility. The president was given the narrowly construed power of being the commander in chief of the US military and federalized militia when in battle after war had been initiated; responsibility for nominating ambassadors and other high government officials subject to confirmation by the Senate; the authority to receive foreign diplomats; the power to negotiate and submit treaties with foreign nations for Senate acceptance; the option of recommending legislation to Congress; the responsibility to execute congressionally passed laws; and the authority to pardon people convicted of crimes. Most of the other powers of the new federal government, including those in defense and foreign policy, were given to Congress.

The Constitution gave the Congress the powers, among others, to provide for the general welfare; collect taxes and duties; pay debt; borrow and coin money; appropriate funds and make rules for government activities; regulate interstate commerce; establish uniform rules of naturalization; fix the standard of weights and measures; make laws on bankruptcies and counterfeiting; secure copyrights and patents; establish post offices and post roads; constitute courts below the Supreme Court; define and punish piracy and felonies on the high seas and offenses against the Law of Nations; and pass all laws necessary and proper to execute its other powers and those of the federal government.

In defense and foreign policy, in addition to approving the president's proposed treaties, ambassadors, and high defense and foreign policy officials, the Congress has the power to provide for the common defense; raise and support armies; maintain a navy; regulate land and naval forces; and organize, arm, discipline, and govern the militia and provide for calling it forth to execute federal law, put down insurrections, and oppose foreign invasions. The Congress also has the power to declare war and issue letters of marque and reprisal to privateers for attacks short of general war; make rules concerning capture on land and sea; and regulate commerce with foreign nations. Finally, the Congress has the power to exercise authority over locations purchased from states for forts, arsenals, magazines, naval facilities, and other federal buildings. Thus, in general and even in defense and foreign policy, the Constitution gives the Congress many more powers than the chief executive.

Despite what school children learn about the "separation of powers" in the US Constitution, the document provides for separated institutions but in many cases shared powers between the branches of government to purposefully diffuse power. As for the legislative power, the president can suggest legislation, both houses of Congress must pass it, and the president can veto it, subject to a congressional override by two-thirds votes of each legislative chamber. For the more specific case of legislation to take the nation to war, the president can ask for a declaration of war, which must pass by majority vote in each house of Congress. A debate among legal scholars exists about whether the executive can veto such a declaration, but the Constitution's text doesn't make any special arrangements for this type of legislation, so the answer is probably in the affirmative.

According to an adjustment made at the Constitutional Convention, the president, as commander in chief, could respond quickly, without such a congressional declaration, but only for self-defense if the nation itself came under attack; the president's commander-in-chief role was narrowly construed as being the chief commander of forces in battle after Congress or the enemy had decided to take the nation to war. The executive can negotiate treaties with foreign nations and propose them to the Senate, but the less dexterous legislative body must advise him beforehand and during the negotiations and ratify the pacts by a two-thirds vote; the president can nominate high government officials and ambassadors, but the Senate must approve them by a majority vote. The president executes the laws but uses congressionally approved statutory language and budgeted funds to do so. To carry out the laws, the president is in operational control of executive bureaucracies, but Congress has decided what agencies exist and what they are permitted to do. Under the Constitution, because Congress creates executive bureaucracies and gives them their marching orders and funding, the so-called "unitary theory of the executive" exists only in the fantasyland of constitutional "separation of powers."

The president can call the Congress into special session, but he cannot dissolve the legislative body. Even the president's almost plenary power to pardon cannot be used during impeachment proceedings in Congress or for criminal purposes. The founders' intent for Congress to be the dominant branch of government is shown by the many more enumerated powers in the much longer Article I governing that body than the fewer enumerated powers for the president in the much shorter Article II governing executive powers. Furthermore, the Congress can impeach the president, but the executive cannot dissolve Congress and call for special elections. In short, in most major areas where the Constitution gave the president at least some power, it also involved Congress as a check.

Some modern-day analysts have alleged that the framers left presidential powers vague — for chief executives to fill in as they went. Yet the text of the Constitution indicates that although the Congress wanted the president to have some independence from Congress — for example, the chief executive's limited veto power over congressional legislation — the document is one of strictly enumerated powers. For example, the 10th Amendment reserves to the states or people constitutional powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states. With the excesses of the British central government and king in mind, the framers clearly wanted to limit the power of the federal government and especially that of the president. In the Constitution, presidential powers are explicit but purposefully limited — even in defense and foreign policy. As satirical writer H. L. Mencken said, even in the early twentieth century when the president wasn't as powerful: "No man would want to be President of the United States in strict accordance with the Constitution."

Even law professors Saikrishna B. Prakash and Michael D. Ramsey, proponents of executive power, admit that "advocates of presidential primacy have little to hang their hats on" from the Constitutional Convention. They continue: "This drafting history, with little explicit commentary on foreign affairs, should hardly encourage those who insist that, notwithstanding the lack of textual support, the President must dominate foreign affairs."

Modern-day analysts who think the Constitution is vague on executive powers simply cannot believe that the framers wanted such presidential authority to be so limited. However, they have been unduly influenced by the modern conception of the presidency, which has invented, over the course of American history, many "implied" or "inherent" executive powers nowhere to be found in the Framers' Constitution. These proponents of executive power are over-interpreting the Constitution to justify the expansion of presidential power that has grown over the last 70 years into an imperial presidency and beyond. In trying to square actual practice with the text of the Constitution, proponents of executive power try to give flexibility to the Constitution that is not there. For example, constitutional scholar John Yoo asserted that if the Constitution doesn't have flexibility, "a whole lot of things we've done would be unconstitutional." Rather than trying to bend the Constitution to fit bad practice, the unconstitutionality of practice should be admitted and returned to within constitutional parameters.

Let's examine how people who assert executive primacy bend the Constitution in foreign policy. First, the proponents claim that the founders were influenced by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European political philosophers — such as William Blackstone, John Locke, and Baron de Montesquieu — to define a certain set of governmental functions as "executive" in nature. Yet these European commentators used the royal prerogative of the British monarchy as their model, which the American founders clearly and explicitly rejected. For example, in the British system, the king had the prerogative to initiate wars, whereas the American Constitution gave the power to declare war to Congress. Also, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the coronation of George I, from the German Hanover House, as king of Great Britain in 1714, the British parliament became the dominant governing force in Britain for most of the eighteenth century. Thus, if any British model existed for the delegates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it was parliamentary supremacy over the king, with both legislative and executive power centered in the parliament. Even the rise of a more assertive monarch, George III, which indirectly caused the American Revolution, did not uproot the parliament-dominated underpinning of the British system, which has continued down to the present. The American colonists did not like George III's assertiveness, rejected the model of royal prerogative for their new government, and believed that the legislature was a better friend of liberty — although not without some possibility for tyranny itself.

More important, proponents of robust executive power split hairs and make a questionable distinction between the language in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution vesting congressional authority — "All legislative powers herein granted [my emphasis] shall be vested in a Congress" — and the language of Article II, Section 1 vesting executive powers —"The executive power shall be vested in a President." Alexander Hamilton originally made this "vesting clause" argument for expansive unenumerated (residual) executive power during the Pacificus-Helvidius debates with James Madison over George Washington's Neutrality Proclamation in 1793. However, modern-day proponents of executive power continue to make it, even though it is dubious.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments,
INTRODUCTION What Is the Imperial Presidency?,
1 Constitutional Mandates for Defense and Foreign Policy,
2 America's Aggressive Expansion,
3 The United States as a Global Power,
4 The Rise of the Imperial Presidency,
5 War Empowers Executive Expansion,
6 Reclaiming Congressional Authority,
CONCLUSION Restoring the Founders' Vision of the Republic,
Selected Bibliography,
About the Author,

Editorial Reviews

Since World War II and then with the post-9/11 ‘War on Terror,’ the enormous expansion of presidential powers to wage permanent wars around the world has had ruinous effects on U.S. foreign policy and the liberties and security of both Americans and people worldwide. Ivan Eland’s superb book War and the Rogue Presidency could not be more timely in examining in depth the history of the congressional-executive tug-of-war over U.S. security policy, how the imperial presidency has created and perpetuated major defense and foreign policy failures, why reclaiming congressional oversight is essential, and what specific measures can and should be adopted to restore an effective national defense and constitutional liberties. I highly recommend War and the Rogue Presidency for anyone.”
—Daniel Ellsberg, author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

“War and the Rogue Presidency is a fascinating history of the relationship between wars and the rise of the imperial presidency. If war is the mother of Big Government, it is also mother to presidents who used their expanded powers in ways exceeding the limits envisioned by America’s Founders. The solution, Eland argues, is for Congress to restore its authority and restrain the ‘creeping despotism’ that has led to unbridled presidential power. Eland provides concrete steps Congress may—and should—take to keep presidents from going ‘rogue.’ Highly recommended!”
—Jonathan J. Bean, Professor of History, Southern Illinois University

“In War and the Rogue Presidency Ivan Eland chronicles the rise of the imperial presidency with great insight. But does he have a solution? It’s worth pondering.”
—Mike M. Moore, former Editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; author, Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance

“In the well-written and thought-provoking book, War and the Rogue Presidency, Ivan Eland convincingly demonstrates that the expanding power of the executive branch, which has resulted in the creation of the imperial presidency, is a result of our increasing involvement in foreign wars. A must read for those concerned about the decline of the checks and balances envisioned by our Founding Fathers.”
—Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense; Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; former Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

“Ivan Eland’s learned and balanced book, War and the Rogue Presidency, identifies war as one of the chief threats to the Republic, whether we win or lose, given the effect of war on presidential power. Few subjects are worthy of greater public debate.”
—Richard Shenkman, Founder, History News Network, George Washington University

“The seemingly permanent mobilization of American society since the Second World War to manage global security has produced a bloated, intrusive, and increasingly imperial and unresponsive federal government. In his book War and the Rogue Presidency, Ivan Eland sees clearly the danger to our freedom and outlines the Congressional and other reforms needed to find the path back.”
—Harvey M. Sapolsky, Professor of Public Policy and Organization Emeritus and former Director of the Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“After seventy years of a monolithic, interventionist foreign policy that has ruled Washington elites, the superb book War and the Rogue Presidency is calling for an essential, realist American foreign policy emphasizing a robust diplomacy, military restraint, and increased congressional oversight. Author Ivan Eland has assembled an outstanding and lucid, critical examination of how the Executive must be reined in from being granted unprecedented powers to wage perpetual war globally that is subverting the Constitution, costing trillions, harming millions, trampling on civil liberties, and creating more and more enemies who endanger America. War and the Rogue Presidency is must reading for anyone seeking a safer, freer, and more peaceful world.”
—Rand H. Paul, M.D., U.S. Senator and Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs

“War and the Rogue Presidency is an invaluable history of the constitutional basis for Congress’s war-making power that has been all but forgotten and ignored in the last two decades; and as a bonus the book also makes a compelling case linking unapproved administrative-state operations abroad with the development of the administrative state domestically—both products of congressional abdication.”
—C. Boyden Gray, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union; former Counsel to President George H. W. Bush; former Special Envoy for European Affairs and Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy at the Mission of the U.S. to the European Union; former Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief; former Chairman of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association

“Today’s domineering president and dysfunctional Congress worry Americans on the right and the left about the serious problem of the imperial—or rogue—presidency. Ivan Eland’s book War and the Rogue Presidency explains the problem’s history, highlights the combination of wars and congressional abdication that brought us to our current state, and offers an agenda to restore the Constitution’s just checks and balances. There is a lot to learn from this important book.”
—Eugene Gholz, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame; former Senior Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, U.S. Department of Defense; author, Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry and U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy

“I have enjoyed reading Ivan Eland’s book, War and the Rogue Presidency. Given the mounting concern in our body politic about the extent to which the Congress has yielded its constitutional authority to a president prone to ignore the Constitution and take the expedient course without consultation with the people’s representatives, it is very timely. It documents the sad series of executive usurpations of legislative authority that have transformed the American republic into a warfare state headed by an elected despot. It concludes with numerous recommendations for remedial action to restore the legislative power and the civil liberties our founding fathers considered essential to preserving our liberties. War and the Rogue Presidency is must reading for anyone concerned about presidential overreach and the demise of the checks and balances of our constitutionally mandated separation of powers.”
—Charles W. Freeman, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Chairman, Projects International, Inc.

“Once more in War and the Rogue Presidency, Ivan Eland has given us a book that challenges orthodoxies on the left and right. A century ago, in the midst of World War I, Randolph Bourne warned that ‘war is the health of the state.’ Subsequent experience has made it necessary to sharpen that point: war is the health of the presidency. Eland attributes the enormous power the executive wields at home and abroad not to some purportedly inevitable forces of modernization but to executive calculation and Congressional abdication. He calls for Congress to reassert its Constitutional war powers and recalibrate the balance of power in DC. His proposals will provoke both liberals and conservatives. Few readers will be left indifferent to Eland's call to abolish the Electoral College.”
—Richard M. Gamble, Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Chair in History and Politics, Hillsdale College; author, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation

“Ivan Eland is one of America’s top experts on U.S. presidents and their conduct of foreign policy. War and the Rogue Presidency is his finest book so far, and it provides a searing indictment of rapidly growing presidential abuses. Eland shows how an out-of-control imperial presidency is not only destroying America’s reputation abroad, it is undermining our entire constitutional system of government and inflicting fatal wounds on the domestic liberties Americans cherish. War and the Rogue Presidency is essential reading for anyone who wants to help reverse that ominous trend.”
—Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute

“Few readers, even those who start from very different political principles, will fail to be impressed with Ivan Eland’s passionate, provocative and historically informed case against the ‘Rogue Presidency’ and his call for returning the power to declare war to the Congress. War and the Rogue Presidency is a timely and important book.”
—Hugh T. Rockoff, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Rutgers University

“In this fine book, Eland interweaves constitutional theory and micro-history to produce a thoughtful and insightful analysis of the war-making powers of the American President. He is relentless in his critique of both Presidents who have transgressed and Congresses which have allowed transgressions. War and the Rogue Presidency both extends and focuses Eland’s earlier work on the fabric of power in the United States.”
—T. Hunt Tooley, Professor of History, Austin College; author, The Western Front: Battleground and Homefront in the First World War

“In the past half century, Americans suffered serious threats to their civil liberties and Constitutional rights during the Vietnam War (Richard Nixon and Watergate), the war in Central America (Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra), and the post-9/11 ‘war on terror.’ Ivan Eland’s important book War and the Rogue Presidency not only traces the connection between war and growth of the ‘imperial presidency’ from the earliest days of our republic, but shows that our current national policy of seemingly permanent conflict abroad puts our rights at home very much at risk today. Just as important, he offers practical suggestions for ways that Congress might reassert its Constitutional powers in foreign policy to rein in an overweening executive branch.”
—Jonathan V. Marshall, author, The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic and The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era

“Ivan Eland’s book War and the Rogue Presidency substantiates five important facts. First, wars have allowed U.S. presidents to break free of the constitutional chains that limit executive power. Second, presidents are power seeking and thus incentivized to engage in war to enhance their domestic policy prerogatives. Third, the original constitutional republic is incompatible with and being increasingly undermined by rogue, a.k.a. imperial, presidents. And, fourth, now that the chains of the Constitution have been replaced with ropes of sand, a plebiscitary despotism is emerging with the president at its head. However, Eland doesn’t leave his readers hopeless. His proposals for remedying the problem of the rogue presidency may or may not succeed, for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, in a worse-case scenario it is not unimaginable for a president to go rogue and declare war on his own domestic enemies. Today presidential powers are so vast that some future president may decide to establish the circumstances (i.e., create the crisis), and then proceed to remedy it (i.e., war). This isn’t the soft despotism of bureaucratic usurpation of property rights for which we’ve become accustomed, but despotism with bullets flying. If this seems to be ridiculous, read War and the Rogue Presidency and then judge for yourself.”
—Marshall L. DeRosa, Professor of Political Science, Florida Atlantic University

“For America’s elites, no cash cow is more sacred than the military-industrial complex. Six decades after President Dwight Eisenhower warned against it, Ivan Eland shows how the refusal of Congress to meet constitutional responsibilities has led to a warfare state—with consolidation of undemocratic power in the White House. War and the Rogue Presidency offers a methodical indictment of congressional complicity that has ushered in perpetual war. This book challenges readers across political spectrums to face the dire realities of red-white-and-blue militarism run amuck. While spelling out how powerful forces have turned Congress into an accessory to normalize ongoing warfare, the author also provides clear ideas for how the legislative branch could end its capitulation to a brutal war machine.”
—Norman Solomon, Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Public Accuracy; author, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

“Ivan Eland's important book War and the Rogue Presidency exposes the dangerous and often quasi-dictatorial power that U.S. presidents have amassed since the 20th century and how that power has resulted in a long and seemingly endless series of disastrous wars. Thankfully, Eland also provides a list of practical, concrete ways Congress and U.S. citizens can reclaim power from the executive and create something far closer to true democratic governance in this country.”
—David Vine, Professor of Anthropology, American University; author, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World

“Thoroughly researched and informative, the valuable book War and the Rogue Presidency traces the history and evolution of excessive Presidential authority, explains how this accretion of executive power is contrary to the Constitution and the vision of the founders, and argues for urgent measures to restore congressional authority and limit the ability of Presidents to drag the nation into unnecessary and unwinnable wars.”
—David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame; Chair of the Board, Fourth Freedom Forum

“A timely and extraordinary contribution to the current on-going national discussion over separation of powers with respect to our Federal government, War and the Rogue Presidency: Restoring the Republic after Congressional Failure is a critically important and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Political Science collections—as well as a ‘must read’ study for political activists and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject.”
—Midwest Book Review

“In his latest book, War and the Rogue Presidency, author Ivan Eland calls out Congress for surrendering its war-making power to the president. . . . While Eland expertly identifies several reasons for the legislative branch’s export of its power of making war to the executive branch, he points to partisanship as perhaps the most relevant reason for that relinquishment. . . . No one who’s taken even peripheral notice of the behavior of lawmakers—federal and state—and their inclination to put faith to party above faith to principle could disagree with Eland. Eland’s expert examination of the manifold ways political parties and their leadership structure contribute to congressional willingness to rubber-stamp executive combat operations reminds readers of John Trenchard’s savage discourse on the real purpose for a politician’s fidelity to his political party. . . . In War and the Rogue Presidency, Eland examines why a president would want to possess a power considered by most lawmakers to be politically fatal to their congressional careers. . . . Unlike most contemporary critics of the never-ending wars, most of which are begun by the president, Ivan Eland not only diagnoses the disease, but he suggests a course of treatment that could, if followed faithfully, cure it. . . . And that is a call to action we can eagerly endorse.”
—The New American

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