Afraid of Trump becoming a dictator? Blame Bush and Obama.

In their utter passivity and cravenness before the Executive branch, America's ruling class has been implicitly crying out for the rule of a tyrant

The power of the executive office.
(Image credit: Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Image courtesy Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

As Donald Trump has closed in on the Republican nomination, people are getting nervous. Republican and Democratic figures look at his kind words for Vladimir Putin, or how he praised the Chinese for putting down protesters at Tiananmen Square, or the strangely complimentary way he speaks of Kim Jung Un executing his family members, and they think: What if we have a tyrant — an incipient fascist dictator — on our hands?

They're right to worry. For all the talk of the polarization in Washington, the truth is that both major parties under the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have worked to remove the restraints on the presidency and drastically exaggerate its authority. If Donald Trump wants to wield nearly unlimited power, he's seeking an office that provides it.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.