Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget speech was two parts bragging on small-ball programs of dubious value to Illinoisans and one part hysterical hate mongering, delivered with a wrinkled forehead and in a tone of unctuous concern. It was a paradigm of the high-hysterical style fashionable among Democrats craving the national spotlight.
“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker intoned in his budget address, as he suggested that populist concerns about inflation, unchecked immigration, and the inequities of DEI are a precursor to Nazism.
Really?
“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”
So, it’s all over for the United States on St. Paddy’s Day? We will wake with a hangover of historical proportions, according to Illinois’ wealthy and ambitious chief executive.
This is ridiculous. Reducing government spending, deporting criminals who entered this country illegally, and treating every American equally without regard to the color of their skin or ethnic or religious heritage will strengthen the foundation of our Republic, not weaken it.
And it’s beyond offensive for any American politician to suggest that political opponents are as evil as those who slaughtered 6 million Jews and sparked a world conflagration that caused another 50 million violent deaths. Pritzker certainly knows better. He helped fund the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which makes his promiscuous allusions to Nazi Germany all the more obscene.
The governor wasn’t done with his specious historical analogies, either. He also let his fellow Illinoisans know that we don’t have kings in America, and by golly he won’t bend his knee to anyone who would be king here either.
What induced Pritzker’s rant? The Cleveland Clinic provides a clue: “For people with histrionic personality disorder, their self-esteem depends on the approval of others and doesn’t come from a true feeling of self-worth. They have an overwhelming desire to be noticed and often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention.”
For those of us in Illinois, this comes close to describing our governor’s interesting psyche: He’s the needy billionaire.
I don’t invoke the specter of a mental disorder lightly, but as the governor noted himself we are in the midst of a mental health crisis in this country. And repeatedly crying “Nazi!” in a speech ostensibly about the state budget is Exhibit A.
Criticizing contemporary political leaders who try to amass too much power is fair game, however. Even at our nation’s founding, some Americans believed that the presidential power enshrined in the Constitution was disturbingly monarchical. Alexander Hamilton addressed these claims in “Federalist 69,” in which he compared and contrasted the powers of the presidency with those of England’s king and New York’s governor.
Hamilton pointed out the ways in which the Constitution limits presidential authority, including the power of Congress to overturn a presidential veto, the four-year term, the Senate’s advice and consent role for senior appointments and treaties, Congress’s role authorizing spending and creating laws, and judiciary’s role resolving disputes about the law.
When Congress delegates authority to create rules, enter into contracts, or award grants to the executive branch, the president is acting pursuant to law and consistent with constitutional precepts. Hamilton also pointed out that the discretionary powers of presidents and governors is limited in ways a king’s are not.
In “Federalist 70,” Hamilton went on to argue why vesting executive power in a single person makes government more responsive to the people. He wrote that a single person can act more decisively and is more clearly accountable for his actions or inaction than two or more people who might share executive power. A legislature can argue, but a nation needs a single leader who can act, and act with energy.
So the Founders created an office in which executive power was consigned to a single person. They did not create, nor envision, a branch of government in which executive power was vested in the 3 million people employed under the president. When Donald J. Trump acts energetically to assure that those employees act as he wills, firing some and ordering how executive discretion is to be exercised, he is acting precisely as Hamilton contemplated an American president should act under the Constitution.
There will be disagreements about the scope of presidential power, just as there are disputes about the scope of a governor’s power under the Illinois constitution. JB Pritzker, for example, issued executive order after executive order imposing quarantine-type mandates in response to COVID-19 without complying with the statutory basis for making such orders. When legal challenges to those orders moved through the court system against him, he dropped the executive orders, and reopened Illinois schools and businesses.
His extra-legal authoritarian actions caused irreparable harm to students, businesses, and Illinoisans generally, but Pritzker is neither a Nazi nor a king. He’s just a bad governor who craves power, violated the law, and hurt the people he was elected to serve.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
