(From https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/King_Washington_(Washington's_World)
The Constitution of the United States was drafted in the ever collapsing situation that the newly founded American nation found itself under the Articles of Confederation. Interstate conflict, taxation and debt issues, and the several states engaging in international diplomacy, brought the nation close to collapsing. The drafters of the eventual Constitution, a group of mostly men of the Federalist party, believed that a strong central government was necessary for the nation to continue. The Anti-Federalists believed that a strong central government would eventually destroy the sovereignty of the several states, and eventually create a unified, tyrannical government. In order to appease and placate the concerns of the Anti-Federalists, Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, balanced the power of the eventual federal government with a system of checks and balances between three branches of government. The intention of these branches and checks and balances was to give clear lanes of responsibility, and balance out competing interests by pitting the interests of the branches of government against each other.
This was an effective yet delicate system for hundreds of years. In that system, the most powerful branch of government, the legislature, also had an internal fight within its two separate houses, with representatives chosen in two distinct ways, with an overall larger group of individuals all competing against each other within the legislature. The legislature was powerful, yet schizophrenic, and constantly fighting against itself, which prevented the branch from moving too quickly, and allowed the American public to have greater control over what their government was or was not doing in their name. The executive branch was envisioned to execute the laws and duties that the congress had enacted into laws or acts. The executive branch was always believed to be to be an attack dog or an exceptionally short leash. The President had powerful responsibilities that were exceptionally narrow in nature. Finally, the judiciary, as I stated in my musing about judicial review, was supposed to more or less be an arbiter of the government, within the government, and between the government and the people.
The overall original intent of the founders of the United States, and the framers of the constitution, was to create a central government that could conduct the business of government in a limited yet focused scope. Each branch was designed with a purpose in mind, and oversight from the other branches, and competing interests from the other branches in order to, in theory, prevent or inhibit overuse of power. As long as the branches stayed within their lane, and actively participated in the checks and balances as their respective branches were intended, the system did not grossly violate liberty, the country was stable, and Americans on average could more or less ignore the existence of the federal government.
It is only in times when the federal government overstepped its specific boundaries, and the individual branches of the federal government overstepped their areas of responsibility, does the nation as a whole become destabilized, and our political system and social system begins to upend. The Civil War was more or less caused by a federal government interfering on both sides of the issue of slavery, rather than leaving the issue for the states to figure out amongst themselves. On the anti slavery side, the Fugitive Slave Act more or less legalized slavery in states that explicitly banned slavery, and even compelled those states militia’s and law enforcement systems to participate in slavery by providing manpower and resources to searching for escaped slaves in their respective jurisdictions, and participate in the abhorrent practice of enslaving human beings. On the converse side, the South was forced at gunpoint to remain in a nation that the South did not want to participate in where, from the Southern point of view, their sovereign state’s rights were being trampled on by a oversized federal government. Of course this is a rather broad and generic overview of the causes of the Civil War, however, as I stated previously, the central issue was a fight over federal power, and exercising federal power over a sizeable minority in either direction that did not wish to have that power used against it.
I would further argue that as the federal government has grown in size and scope, the less stable our nation has become. In the past, when the federal government was small, the largest authority was state and local government, in which a smaller population had greater influence over, and could better tailor their states or county’s to whatever the citizens of that state wanted. Post Civil War, state government and local government has dwindled in relevancy, and this is specifically due to the growth of the federal government, and the unilateral power of the Executive Branch’s bureaucratic departments. An example of this is with education; In the past, public education was almost exclusively conducted at a local level, with teachers provided by the local community, usually in someone’s house. The modern public school scheme began in the early 20th century, with the rise of urbanization. The real death knell to local control over education came about with the creation of the Department of Education in the 1980’s. Since then, the focus on public education is less concerned about what parents want to teach their kids, but rather a push towards educating for national tests such as the SAT and ACT. Curriculum has moved further from the reach of parents, and ever more into unelected government bureaucrats at the Dept of Education who more or less work there for the entirety of their careers.
This is just one example of many, seemingly endless departments and bureau’s under the President that are the real powerhouse of American governance. And this becomes a major issue due to the divergence of interest that the State has, versus what people who have to live with the consequences of the State’s actions are. The bureaucratic state is far less accountable to the people whom it governs, as they are not directly replaced via political means. And the size of the government has grown to the point where it would take an executive who seriously believed in reforming the system to undertake removing those in posts who are doing more harm than good.
The Presidency has become an imperial court. The President has become a king, an emperor, and relies on essentially what amounts to a feudal court in order to function.