explicitly granted or implied — exist within it.
More precisely, power issues from the division
of action through political processes. Power is not an “input.” Nor can it ever project from a
monadic source, like radiation from a bar of Kryptonite. It is in the process that war-making
powers shift towards the executive. This effect, too, needs to be stated more precisely: As the
division of action which constitutes the war-making power is reconfigured, it can become
overwhelmingly coded in common sense as presidential. This may qualify as “constitutional
dictatorship,” but not as despotism.
Stay, for now, with the familiar image of a balance of power. Which shifts in the balance
between branches of government would be constitutional and which not? The alarming fact —
which can be traced back to the division of action but which is not identical with it — is that no
fixed rule can settle this oft-times urgent question. The threshold will depend on how numerous
circumstantial conditions enter constitutional processes.
One of these conditions is the question Is this war or not? For the Soldier or the Casualty
there is usually just one response. The position of the Citizen yields something more ambiguous.
Although the Citizen’s appeal to the Constitution will always be fluid,
most literal. The desire for principle — to end the regress of debate, to settle conflict without
further conflict — is great. By odd contrast, those who enter the discursive zone of the
Constitution through the narrow door of the law seek to expand debate, not to end it. The Citizen
navigates in the passage between the safe harbor of principle and stormy process.
Although tensions around war-making power have stretched across most of our history,
they reached an important climax as reactions against the oppressive climate of the Cold War
converged with an increasingly unpopular military adventure in Vietnam.
said it was unethical, a military opposition said it was impractical, a political opposition said it
was unconstitutional. Although President Johnson had campaigned against Barry Goldwater
promising peace, by his inauguration in 1965 escalation of the war was well under way. Just that
0This is true of all power relevant to politics; see Chapter 5 for the basis of this claim.
Specifically on constitutional powers: because the Executive is led by one person, the
constitutive role of political processes in presidential power is less obvious than, for example, the
way even the most precise and explicit grants of power to a multiple-member Congress will issue
from political processes. It is, I think, clarifying to take Article 1 as the model for Article 2 and
— as I have done here — for the relation between branches.
0More topical than juridical.
0On the Cold War as a system of domestic political culture, see Chapter [xx] below.
P.A. Meyers — Chapter 18 of The Position of the Citizen After September 11 — page 1
Convention