‘Modern presidents exercise power undreamed of by the Founding Fathers’

(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch / UPI / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

‘Don’t want Biden or Trump to have so much power? Maybe the US needs a poly-presidency.’

A.J. Jacobs in the Los Angeles Times

The U.S. presidency has grown too powerful, says A.J. Jacobs. “Consider that George Washington issued eight executive orders in eight years while Barack Obama issued 276 in his eight years and Donald Trump 220 in just four.” The Constitution “gives Congress the power to declare war,” but these days it’s usually the president who “starts, executes and ends conflicts.” Maybe we should reconsider an idea the Founding Fathers rejected: “Split up the presidency” among several people.

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Russia’s effort to plunge Ukraine into darkness has shown that the international community must make power grids off limits in war, says Peter Fairley. “When power stops, life grinds to a halt.” Establishing a strong grid protection protocol limiting attacks on power systems “could be a game changer.” The threat of prosecution could make “bad actors” think twice before ordering strikes to deprive civilians of electricity. This “would save lives and prevent needless destruction.”

“The notion that rich taxpayers will flee if the state comes for their money is mostly fiction,” says Brian Galle. California, New Jersey, Minnesota and New York “buck the overall trend by taxing rich people at higher rates.” If this really prompted the wealthy to move, these states would be “devoid of wealthy people. Instead, they are among the richest in the country.” States shouldn’t let the “mobile millionaire myth” deter them from “good tax policy.”

Moving away from requiring standardized test scores for college applicants was a mistake, says the Washington Examiner editorial board. The SAT and the ACT were long “nonnegotiable” parts of the college application process, but schools made them optional due to Covid. Elite universities “bought activist arguments that standardized tests are racist” and continued the policy. They’re making them mandatory again after realizing these exams are among the best “sorting tools” for picking students prepared to succeed in college.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.

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