Presidential powers

It is an interesting question how far the framers – or ratifiers, for that matter – understood the constitution to authorize presidential use of deadly force as an instrument of international relations or foreign policy, short of war and without a special authorization by the congress.

Jefferson, not a framer, chose to read the constitution as creating a federal government too weak to found a bank and a president too weak to fight the Barbary pirates without specific congressional authorization.

He wrung his hands a lot before deciding neither the presidency nor the federal government were too limited in powers to make the Louisiana Purchase.

But not everyone of his age took such a chaste view of either federal or presidential power.

A different question concerns the authority of the president to use such force under such circumstances when the congress does authorize it, though outside the context of actual war.

And yet others, equally interesting, concern meddling in the internal politics of other countries by the use of such deadly force or by cooperation with locals in political violence.

American presidents did not create the entire national security establishment of the Cold War and later times that has enabled them to do such things all by themselves.

The Cold War is over and the scale of our international action ought to be much cut back.

But that is not to say the nature of our actions must or can nowadays be entirely pacific.

We still need a security establishment and a presidency capable of skullduggery, like it or not.

Including the deadly sort, meddling and all.