Michael Pelchat is a retired pharmacist and current history student. He lives in Webster.

Rick Santorum’s visit to New Hampshire shed light on an alarming trend in American government: the growing power of the president. Santorum is concerned over this growth, calling it tyranny coming from the president’s pen. He is right.

While there has been a steady growth of presidential power over the course of our history, this growth came with a healthy respect for the powers of Congress and the acknowledgment that presidential power had limits. Then along came the unitary executive theory.

This concept, put into practice by President George W. Bush, held that the president had the authority to act unilaterally in several areas, particularly through executive privilege and appointments within the executive branch. Supporters argued that, because the Constitution gave executive power solely to the president, he held that power unchecked by Congress or the courts. Some have even argued that the office of president was “divorced” from the Constitution.

This theory flies in the face of the fact that the Constitution grants the president very few powers and many of those are subject to Congressional limits. Most scholars agree, based on arguments during the Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions, that the framers intended to create a strong president, but one with limits. The founders were mindful of the excesses of both the king and his colonial governors as well as that of some popularly elected legislatures. They feared that tyrannical impulses could exist in both.

In Federalist Paper #51, James Madison wrote, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” This notion was at the heart of the concept of divided government and the idea of checks and balances. Madison and others reasoned if the three branches of government were in a perpetual power struggle and if each branch was given sufficient power to check the other, no one branch could predominate.

The Constitution, though, failed to foresee the rise of political parties and the blunting effect they had on Congress’ appetite to control the executive branch. Congress became quite willing to serve as a check on a president of the opposite party but had very little desire to counter one of their own. This tendency has only increased.

Hyper-partisanship has led to the willingness of members of the president’s party in Congress to follow his lead and, by their silent acceptance of executive excess, enable him to grab more and more power. Legislation has also become more and more difficult to pass, so Congress has delegated more of their power to the president, and now, government by executive order has now become the rule rather than the exception.

Rick Santorum is right to be concerned as it now appears that Bush and the unitary executive was just the opening act. Modern presidents have all sought to increase executive power but now, our current president is threatening to take executive power to levels Bush could only imagine. He believes his ability to act unilaterally extends not only to the executive branch but into the legislative branch as well. The divorce of the presidency from the Constitution is under way.

We are entering dangerous territory. The founders never intended for an imperial presidency.

Congress has, in effect, abandoned the playing field. Members of the president’s party simply acquiesce or remain silent while the opposition does little more that express indignant outrage or fire off letters in protest. It is left to the courts to check presidential excesses but with last summer’s Supreme Court decision on executive privilege, it is fair to wonder if they can be an effective check.

Many Americans believe that the system of checks and balances in our government is automatic. It is not. When Congress willingly delegates some of its power to the president and then does nothing when he attempts to grab more, the power struggle as Madison envisioned it is over and the whole system collapses. We are then left with the imperial president the founders tried so hard to avoid.

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body, there can be no liberty.”

With this simple sentence, Madison in Federalist Paper #47 offers the most compelling reason why all this matters. The framers intended a strong president, but one within the Constitution, not above it.

Congress must find its voice again. It must fight to take back its rightful place as equal to the executive. It must take back the powers it has given away and it must find the courage to tell the president no and then make it stick. Despite the dysfunction and the noise, our government works best when the power struggle is in full bloom. Each branch serves to check the worst impulses of the other. When the president bypasses Congress, those worst impulses become policies detrimental to the whole idea of republican government.