Election coverage shouldn’t just be about presidential race

The 2016 election is more than 18 months away, but media coverage is already focusing on the presidential race. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and even long-shot Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), got plenty of attention when they recently announced their candidacies. Hillary Clinton’s recent announcement threatened to break the Internet.

{mosads}It’s understandable that so much attention is focused on presidential candidates, even this early. Most House races are not competitive. Just 34 Senate seats are up for election, and of those, only a handful or so are expected to be in play. But all the attention on the presidential race has a price. First, it creates the illusion that whoever is elected president can unilaterally change the direction of the nation. Paul has promised to “take our country back,” suggesting he (or whoever is elected president) has the ability to bring about dramatic change. As we’ve seen from the Obama presidency, things aren’t that simple. Presidents rarely have the ability to act unilaterally — and when they do, their actions are often incremental or limited. In a constitutional system of checks and balances, the president’s ability to act often depends on the actions of others — members of Congress, judges, even other executive branch officials.

Relatedly, the emphasis on the presidential election overstates the scope of presidential power. In announcing his candidacy, Paul said of terrorists that he will “do whatever it takes to defend America from these haters of mankind.” This reinforces the (incorrect) belief that defending the nation rests on the shoulders of one person, the president. Congress possesses significant responsibilities for national security under the Constitution (as Paul has often acknowledged).

Since the Korean War, presidents of both parties have claimed expansive, often unchecked, war power. During the Cold War and the post 9/11 response to terrorism, Americans have turned to the president as someone who can keep them safe. That’s a mistake, both as a matter of constitutional law and experience. The framers of the Constitution created a system designed to prevent the accumulation of power in any one branch of government. In an age of seemingly ongoing emergency, the tendency to see the president as the nation’s defender has expanded presidential power past constitutional bounds. It can feel comforting to idealize the president’s ability to keep the nation safe, but history demonstrates this can be dangerous. Presidents, like anyone else, can of course make mistakes, or simply make bad decisions. Recent examples include George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and Obama’s military action against Libya in 2011.

The framers of the Constitution correctly recognized it would be a mistake to concentrate war power in the hands of one person. They rejected the British monarchy and understood the lessons history had to teach about the danger of trusting one person to make decisions about war and peace.

By focusing national attention on the presidential election, the media reinforces a conception of presidential power that is directly at odds with the framers’ vision. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson observed in 1952, the modern president has become “the focus of public hopes and expectations.” This is, in large part, because of extravagant presidential assertions of power and congressional deference to such claims. But media attention is also part of the problem. Jackson’s observation in 1952 is just as applicable today: “[n]o other personality in public life can begin to compete with [the president] in access to the public mind through modern methods of communications.” Jackson’s point applies to presidential candidates as well. It’s unrealistic to expect journalists to rein in or modulate their coverage of the presidential race. However, we will all be better served if media coverage of the 2016 election at least raises questions about the limits of presidential power, the constitutional roles of all three branches and the ability of any one person (regardless of who is elected) to singlehandedly change the nation.

Edelson is an assistant professor of government in American University’s School of Public Affairs. He is the author of Emergency Presidential Power: From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror, published in 2013 by the University of Wisconsin Press.