Marcum is a governance fellow at R Street Institute, a nonpartisan, pro-free-market, public policy research organization.
July's Democratic presidential debates highlighted a number of important national issues. From health care to economic inequality, candidates offered many purported solutions. The vast majority of these ambitious plans, however, face a fundamental constitutional roadblock: Congress.
Without congressional support, plans such as Medicare for All or amending the Immigration Nationality Act are dead on arrival. Voters, candidates and media alike are well aware that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would prevent any such legislation from passing his chamber, and if Republicans take the House, the chances for passage are even slimmer.
But if you were completely unfamiliar with American civics, you might have assumed from watching the debates that a president's role is to make policy and lambaste Congress when it does not comply. But of course, all legislative power rests with Congress. Viewers of the debates would be better served by questions that illuminate the presidency's actual institutional roles. These responsibilities are vital for governing, but we often fail to press candidates about them until it is too late.
The president is the commander in chief and has the responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." The president also possesses the power to nominate federal judges and high-level federal officials who oversee the workings of an ever-expanding executive branch.
Legal scholars and government lawyers often discuss the "inherent powers" of the presidency, which include the power to issue executive orders. We should want to know how, as president, the Democratic candidates would wield this power. Last month, for instance, Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted that, as president, she would "give Congress 100 days to put a gun safety bill on [my] desk for signature." If Congress failed to do so, she would "take executive action." What sort of executive action would she take? Does she believe, as president, she could impose an executive order as broad or as wide-reaching as any law imposed by Congress?
Such executive orders would certainly face legal challenges. The Trump administration's own regulatory decision to ban bump stocks was quickly challenged and continues to be litigated in federal court. Would Democratic candidates implement a similar regulatory strategy? Presidents appoint numerous senior officials to the Department of Justice. If the bump stocks case remains unresolved under a Democratic administration, would these new senior legal officials continue the charge? The Trump administration has been routinely criticized for its eagerness to reverse legal arguments raised during the Obama administration. Would a Joe Biden administration just as quickly return to Obama-era positions?
Beyond inherent powers, candidates have spent little time discussing roles specifically tasked to presidents by the Constitution. Consider the president's power to nominate high-level federal officials and judges. Who would Sen. Elizabeth Warren nominate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services if she becomes president? Who would Sen. Bernie Sanders tap to run the Department of the Treasury if he does? Criminal justice reform has been a hallmark of Sen. Cory Booker's platform. Would he pledge to name an attorney general who has experience as a public defender or serving nonprofit legal clinics?
As the third branch of government, the judiciary often gets third-rate consideration on the campaign trial. That was different in 2016, and now President Trump and Senate Republicans often cite the confirmation of dozens of federal judges as their greatest political achievement. But the only real discussion of the judiciary among Democratic candidates has concerned proposals to add seats or set term limits on the Supreme Court, even though the former holds bipartisan opposition and the latter would require amending the Constitution.
Federal judges serve for life and the ramifications of their decisions will last well beyond any one administration. But in the July debates, no Democratic candidates were asked about the judiciary. Yet over the same 48 hours, the Senate confirmed an additional 13 federal judges. Candidates should consider this disconnect. And in the next round of debates, they should tell us whether they have a draft list of qualified candidates for the Supreme Court, just as Trump did when he was the GOP nominee.
The presidency is a unique and powerful role. Yet too often, platforms and campaign promises sidestep the important constitutional responsibilities of the commander in chief. In addition to legislative priorities, candidates should answer how they intend to use the powers of the presidency. Doing so will be helpful for voters and perhaps cast a wider and more recognizable divide between the current presidential nominees.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.