From Suicide Pact to Faustian Bargain to the Art of the Deal: Bowing to Presidential Power

The evolution in America of rationales for the cascading growth of presidential power, which began in earnest in the post-war world and followed a trajectory through the expression of the Imperial Presidency before reaching new heights in President Donald Trump's authoritarian pretensions, has long found foundation in the misappropriation and misuse of Justice Robert H. Jackson's famous aphorism, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." Apologists for a sweeping scope of executive power—both Democrats and Republicans—found sustenance in imagining a world in which U.S. national security interests were imperiled if the projection of presidential power was handcuffed, depriving the chief executive of the latitude to act with "speed and dispatch," yet another misappropriation of a famous aphorism, this one from Alexander Hamilton's writing in the Federalist Papers.