CHAUTAUQUA–Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is the most powerful of government’s three branches.

Nevertheless, with the growth in presidential power and authority, America every four years elects the most powerful peacetime president, says New York Times opinion columnist Dr. David French.

It’s tempting to react differently when different presidents enlarge presidential power. When a president whom one generally supports enlarges presidential power, it’s tempting to be amiable. But when a president whom one generally opposes enlarges presidential power, it’s tempting to be skeptical.

That, however, can’t be the standard for whether such an enlargement is constitutional, much less correct.

French appeared to understand this when he challenged his June 28 morning-amphitheater audience to think of presidential power like this: Not whether you’d want a president whom you support to have particular power but whether you’d be terrified if a president whom you don’t support had that power.

It’s not hard to see that French’s point, though hyperbole and not perfectly framed, is insightful.

Tangentially related to that point is America’s role–over the course of the last century–as a world leader and the extent to which America should bear the burdens of world leadership.

That question was in the background as Dr. Kori Schake, a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, spoke to the morning-amphitheater audience on July 8.

Schake addressed America’s role as a world leader in the last sentence of her talk: “If you don’t like what is required of us to sustain a liberal, rules-based order, I assure you, you’re not going like what it costs us to overturn an order that our adversaries–the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans–would put in place of it.”

What she said is true, and, to be sure, some tasks that need doing in an untidy world are tasks in which the United States should take part.

Yet it’s one thing to understand that. It’s another thing to understand that “should take part” doesn’t mean “must mostly do.”

To put it another way, it’s one thing to understand the United States should bear burdens–including treasure and blood–of world leadership. It’s another thing to believe the United States must bear most such burdens.

After all, as you–faithful reader of this column–understand, America isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the world’s police department.

America has allies that are capable, though not always sufficiently enthusiastic, to bear their share of burdens–including treasure and blood–of world leadership.

Eight decades after the end of World War II, it’s time–actually, it’s past time–to even up the duties of world leadership.

ı ı ı

The debate over this treasure-and-blood issue in the United States doesn’t divide along political-party lines.

Nevertheless, 2024’s major-party presidential candidates are on opposite sides of that question, as you heard during the candidates’ Sept. 10 broadcast debate regarding the Russian war on Ukraine. While Kamala Harris emphasized America’s backing Ukraine in the war, Donald Trump emphasized European countries’ sharing more of the burden plus what the Biden administration should have done to prevent the war in the first place.

That discussion, and others during the June 27 and Sept. 10 presidential-candidate debates, were enhanced by three rules that the host networks–CNN and ABC–rightly adopted:

≤ First, have no studio audience, which can devolve into cheering sections.

≤ Second, lengthen the time limits to two minutes each for answers and responses, and one minute for supplemental answers and responses, and

≤ Third, deter the candidates from interrupting each other–which is both tempting and rude–by keeping them sufficiently far apart and, when one candidate is speaking, turning off the other’s microphone.

While the third rule wasn’t perfectly implemented on Sept. 10, that was an implementation problem, not a rule problem. These three rules should continue for such debates.

And the next time that moderators seek to correct one candidate during a broadcast debate, they should do the same regarding the other. On Sept. 10, the two ABC moderators sought to correct Trump multiple times but never sought to correct Harris. That mistake at times turned the Sept. 10 debate from a one-on-one match into a three-on-one match.

Given ABC’s previous pattern of favoring Harris over Trump, such favoritism during a broadcast debate understandably makes at least some of the public wary.

ı ı ı

For more on the 2024 presidential election, see the interview of Dr. Randy Elf at 0:15.10 to 0:17.10 of https://works.bepress.com/elf/310.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF