Rolland E. Kidder

                                             The Post-Journal

Are We A Government Of One?

                                                            May 31, 2025

 

Rolland Kidder 

To be honest, I have been dismayed recently by the actions of both political parties in what I would call a surrendering of our country to a “government of one.”

Starting first with the Democrats, it is clear that in deference to the desires of a former President–they deferred into looking more closely at the ability of Joe Biden to run again for that office.

It is now clear that there were many warning signs prior to Biden’s failed debate performance last June, and that he should not have been the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. Because of the power of the Presidency, Democrats in high places essentially “rolled over,” hoped for the best, and didn’t act until it was too late.

They erred in so doing, and more viable candidates for the highest office in the land were thus thwarted in seeking that office. To put it bluntly, one of our major political parties failed the country. The power of the Presidency, the power of one — overpowered the traditional political process of the Democratic Party.

Now, we are compounding the problem by what seems to be the virtual abandonment of the Republican Party in opposing in any way the current President. Members of Congress, when President Trump says “Jump!”–they respond, “How high?!”

There appears to be little or no backbone in the Republican Congress when it comes to proposals from the White House. It can be 145% tariffs today, and 30% tariffs tomorrow. It can be taking a gift of half a billion dollars from a sheikh in Arabia so that our President can have a plush airplane with a gilded interior, or have him telling American Universities that they must parrot the messaging of the federal government or be shut down.

Whatever comes out of the White House now is apparently infallible, and the law of the land is to be set by executive decree.

However you look at it, I see in all of this a demeaning of our constitutional government. The Constitution was written to give the congress, the executive and the courts equal jurisdiction over our affairs as a nation. If any branch of the government was to have a leading role, it was to have been the congress through the power of the purse strings.

Now we stand in awe, apparently as helpless as sheep, while in the dead of night the House of Representatives rubber stamps the White House by ripping down a great part of the government previously created by other Republican and Democratic administrations to pay for unneeded tax cuts accelerating the deficit. All put altogether in a “one big Beautiful Bill!”–whatever that means.

I doubt that many members of Congress even knew what was in it. It was too much for at least one Republican member of the House from Long Island who fell asleep that night somewhere in halls of Congress and didn’t wake up for this monumental vote.

It seems that maybe the whole country is asleep. When will this end? It has taken over 200 years, through fits and starts, successes and failures, but, for the most part, with good intentions, to build this country making it the leader of the free world.

Now we seem to be giving it all up to be ruled by a government of one. We shouldn’t be going down this road. This is not what made America great.