Atlantic: A Presidential mistake in the Constitution

In its new issue, the Atlantic Monthly, as part of a larger retrospective on the Bush years and look-ahead to Obama, bemoans the lack of specificity in Article II of the U.S. Constitution for allowing George W. Bush to happen, in the sense of the "unitary executive."

The historical analysis is good. At the constitutional convention, law professor Garrett Epps says that none of the founders wanted to risk Washington's volcanic, even if normally unspoken, temper, to talk about putting more statuatory restrictions on the powers of the presidency. Epps then notes that Alexander Hamilton, the man who pushed for a president-for-life idea, filled the void by essentially acting as Washington's prime minister and developing the idea of the unitary executive.

All well and good so far, and no quibble with Mr. Epps. Epps then notes the number of problems we've had since then, beginning with the deadlocked 1800 election, and the number of times we've amended the Constitution specifically to address executive branch issues.

Still well and good.

Then, his prescriptions fall flat.

Direct popular vote? Wouldn't rein in presidential power.

Force the president to take members of the opposition into his cabinet if there's a mid-term power switch in Congress? How many? What departments? Does the president pick them, or, a la 2007, would Speaker Pelosi pick them? Do you want to clutter the Constitution with that detailed of language?

Meanwhile, Epps misses the boat on not discussing France's hybrid presidential-parliamentary system in light of his proposal.

He misses the boat even more by not even discussing the idea of full parliamentary government in America.

Anyway, give the full story a read; it's great on historical analysis, but you may agree with me it falls short on prescriptive solutions. And, Epps appears ignorant of the rise of the term "presidentialism" to describe the problem at hand.