{"id":4775,"date":"2012-11-21T05:57:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T05:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=4775"},"modified":"2012-12-14T01:31:47","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T01:31:47","slug":"a-stronger-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/a-stronger-president\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stronger President"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 5)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Thankfully, the 2012 election did not have the Messianic mood of the 2008 election. Obama\u2019s dreams of utopia never materialized<\/a><\/strong> and no one made the same mistake of confusing Obama with God<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>. The American people seem to have realized that, whatever his pretensions, Obama is only a man.<\/p>\n

But while the nation of America seems to have got over wanting Obama to be God, they have not given up the wish for the President to have God-like powers. Indeed, Obama\u2019s re-election suggests that America wanted a stronger and more powerful president, one that is almost omnipotent.<\/p>\n

Historically, the Executive Branch has only played a limited role, and the United States Constitution even prohibits the President from introducing legislation. This was intentional, since the legal structure of the United States was set up so that most power resided in the states and in their elected legislatures<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Throughout the twentieth-century, however, American Presidents have progressively assumed unprecedented powers. Yet nothing compares with the way Obama has reinvented the Executive office.<\/p>\n

Even before taking power in 2008, it was clear that Obama believed the president would possess almost super-human powers. He made some extraordinary promises about what he would accomplish, even claiming that he would cut the federal deficit in half<\/strong><\/a>. Such promises could only have been made by someone with an insufficient grasp of how bad America\u2019s economic recession really was, or someone with an over-inflated sense of how much power the President actually wields. Indeed, a foreigner listening to Obama\u2019s extraordinary promises could be forgiven for thinking that the executive branch was the sole organ of government and capable of automatically implementing all the Presidents wishes.<\/p>\n

While the United States President may not wield as much power as Obama might wish, he has done everything he can to increase that power. I have already given some examples in my earlier article \u2018Totalitarian Creep<\/strong><\/a>\u2019, but some more recent examples include<\/p>\n