Plague Journal (30): emergency powers and the power of emergencies

Yesterday I wondered about creeping authoritarianism. What I find is that Democrats worry about this when a Republican is in the White House, and Republicans when a Democrat is there, but few do so when their own party is in power. That's because they see themselves as a special set, as exceptions, as entirely guided by altruism, so that the temptation to accrue power in the executive branch is just not something to worry about in their own case. But, oh, that other party! They are always the next Hitler.

But it is essential to conservatism to be skeptical about the intentions of all who wield power, and of liberalism to be optimistic about it at least for the approved set. On this issue, every party in power shades liberal, and every power out of power, at least where the issue of executive power is concerned, shades conservative.

So seeing that power seems to corrupt even the political philosophy of those who wield it, the most consistent ethic of power probably comes from those who will never wield it. For whom, in other words, the question is always one of philosophy untainted by political maneuvering and gamesmanship. In other words, politicians are the last people to whom one should look for clarity on the issue of power. The exceptions, you'll notice, are people who are leaving office at the end of long careers in politics (see Eisenhower's remarks on the military-industrial complex, for example).

In a national emergency the executive branch is called upon to lead, and power concentrates there, as opposed to Congress, states and localities, as never before. It happened during the Civil War, during WWI, the Cold War, and after 9/11. The danger, of course, is that once the emergency is over, the power of the executive never returns to its sources. This usefulness of emergencies causes executives to want to declare everything an emergency, or to declare every emergency permanent. The Cold War and the War on Terror are examples of the latter.

While the Constitution provides for strong executive leadership during an emergency, I'm not sure that it spells out how the powers assumed by the executive branch during an emergency should flow back to the other branches, along with states and localities, after the emergency is over. That's the crux of this article from The Bulwark. Here's a snip:

This sudden concentration of national power and prominence in the executive, at a moment of crisis, is crucial yet natural. But returning those powers and responsibilities to their proper places, when the time comes, is crucial yet difficult. The nation needs these roles to be disaggregated from the executive branch because its government works best when each institution focuses on doing the job that it was originally designed to do. But the disaggregation requires concerted effort by many institutions.

This disaggregation of power will improve Congress and the states, but it will also improve the executive branch itself. For when the executive branch takes on the ordinary powers and responsibilities of the rest of government, it undermines its own ability to best accomplish its own fundamental constitutional role: the “steady administration” of American law and policy.

It's a great article, and if you're interested in such matters you should read the whole thing. 

So anyway, my advice is to always beware of declarations of permanence. When a leader says something like, "We must never go back to the old lax ways," be very skeptical. The price of liberty, someone said, is eternal vigilance.