The President--Only Accountable to the Electorate

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Think back. Do you remember 1993 and William Sessions? Mr. Sessions, appointed by President Reagan, was the FBI Director who served through Bush 41’s term. When President Clinton took office, Sessions still had four more years to go in his 10-year term as director. And then, Francis Menton reminds readers, President Clinton fired Sessions.

Clinton gave some kind of excuse for firing Sessions having to do with alleged improper use of an FBI airplane. Sessions denied it, but maybe it was true. Do you think Clinton may have had some skeletons in his closet that he did not want investigated? Funny, but I don’t remember a single outraged word in the press about Clinton’s firing of Sessions. (Coup? Constitutional crisis?) Of course, Clinton shortly thereafter got Ken Starr as a Special Prosecutor, so the Sessions firing did not do him a whole lot of good.

Mr. Menton goes on to give a basic civics lesson, one in which he says a law school education is not needed–“basic stuff that they teach (or ought to teach) in high school, or even junior high school.”

The relevant provision of the U.S. Constitution is not exactly hidden. It’s the first sentence of Article II — the article that defines the powers of the Presidency. It is all of 15 words long:

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

That’s it. There is no executive power of the United States that does not belong to the President. The power to investigate and prosecute is an executive power, and therefore belongs to the President, and only to the President.

But in the end, the only place where the President is really accountable is to the electorate in the next election.

Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, and practicing yoga.