The Empty Promises of Trump and Sanders

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are surging in the polls because they talk as though as president they would be the head of a nation. Sure, if all the power in the US ran in thousands of lines from all over the states like the tentacles of an octopus directly to the president, we could  believe Trump might “build a wall” around the country or Sanders might actually be for “free college” as a realistic possibility. The president has powerful but limited powers. He is the head of the largest military in the world and could order the army to “build a wall” around the US but we know that is not going to happen and anyway Congress would not vote to fund it. The Congress, not the president, possesses the commerce power. Bernie Sanders as president could not get a $15-an-hour minimum wage from Congress let alone “free college”. Why is it that we Americans can not face the simple truth that we do not live in a nation? It is not a bad or evil condition. It is in fact a very good condition and one that we thoroughly enjoy. The president has serious worldwide political, economic and moral responsibilities but the Constitution never instituted his office to make him president of a nation. George Washington described himself as a “referee” when he accepted the presidency. The federal government’s limited powers are cut in three between the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court. New York city will try to pass a $15.00-an-hour law but it can be challenged in courts and overturned by the Supreme Court. Would this be on the part of the court the act of a nation? A nation works the other way around. It sends down laws from the top that are valid for everyone absolutely within four borders north, east,west and south. We don’t have four international borders touching most of the 48 states south of Canada.  Alaska has four more international borders and so does Hawaii. We have 50 legal jurisdictions in the 50 states of our union and that is why our name is The United States. We could get a lot more good things done politically if we were a nation but it would be positively frightening to be ordered around by the bureaucrats of a central government as in all the states of the world with citizens unhappily locked up behind the borders of a nation.

Daniel McNeill