Note to Obama: the king is dead.

• Author: Pence, Mike
• Position: American Thought - Barack Obama - Presidency and constitutional law

THE PRESIDENCY is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the U.S. government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. Its powers are vast and consequential, its requirements impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purpose as set forth in the Constitution. Isn't it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what they are seeking? Rather, unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rash toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations.

Yet, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. What the nation says--informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature's God--is that we as a people are not to be ruled or commanded. It says that the president never should forget this--that he has not risen above us, but merely is one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution in accordance with the Declaration of Independence.

The presidency must adhere to its definition as expressed in the Constitution, and to conduct defined over time and by tradition. While the powers of the office have enlarged, along with those of the legislature and the judiciary, the framework of the government was intended to restrict abuses common to classical empires and to the regal states of the 18th century.

Without proper adherence to the role contemplated in the Constitution for the presidency, the checks and balances in the constitutional plan become weakened. This has been most obvious in recent years when the three branches of government have been subject to the tutelage of a single party. Under either party, presidents often have forgotten that they are intended to restrain the Congress at times, and that the Congress is independent of their desires. Thus fused in unholy unity, the political class has raged forward in a drunken expansion of powers and prerogatives, mistakenly assuming that to exercise power is, by default, to do good.

Even the simplest among us knows that this is not so. Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh. Therefore, those who are entrusted with it must educate themselves in self-restraint. A republic is about limitation, and for good reason, because we are mortal and our actions am imperfect.

The tragedy of presidential decision is that--even with the best choice--some, perhaps many, will be left behind, and some, perhaps many, may die. Because of this, a tree statesman lives continuously with what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called "stress of soul." He may give to Paul, but only because he robs Peter, and that is why you always must be wary of a president who seems to float upon his own greatness. For all greatness is tempered by mortality; every soul is equal; and distinctions among men cannot be owned--they am on loan from God, who takes them back and evens accounts at the end.

It is a tragedy indeed that new generations taking office attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it. In the judiciary, this seldom has been better expressed than by Justice Thurgood Marshall: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up." In Congress, it presents itself in massive legislation, acts and codes...