In 1776, in a treatise titled Thoughts on Government, John Adams wrote: “The executive and the legislative powers are natural rivals, and if each has not an effectual control over the other, the weaker will ever be the lamb in the paws of the wolf. The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism”.
Adams, like many of his peers, was somewhat prescient and his predictions have been amply demonstrated in the 250 years since he wrote the words.
Perhaps the most demonstrable example has been the rise of Nazism as the Nazi party gained control over the government of Germany, became ensconced in power, consolidated that power and carried it out through to the end of World War Two.
The despotism has more recently been empowered in Duvalier’s Haiti, Castro’s Cuba, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and Putin’s Russia. Three lesser-known despotisms are Eritrea, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
All of these countries have and still do place power in the hands of either select individuals or in tightly controlled ruling hierarchies.
But the unfortunate fact is there are two countries today that are dangerously close to meeting all the criteria in the words of John Adams, the United States and Israel.
In Israel, the Likud party — the party of Prime Minister Netanyahu — controls 32 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. The Labor Party holds 18 seats and the remaining seats, 59, are split among 11 other parties and it is reasonable to conclude that several of those other parties add to the Likud majority because the recent programs supported by Netanyahu are approved by the Knesset. In that respect, what is currently evident in Israel is being mirrored in the United States where the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches are all three controlled by Republicans or, in the case of the Supreme Court, by justices who are recognized as being strictly conservative in their rendered opinions.
Despite the fact that the balance of Democrats versus Republicans in both houses of Congress is very close (53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, 2 Independents in the Senate and 218 Republicans, 212 Democrats, 1 Independent in the House), the dichotomy between the two parties is so strained that there is virtually little crossover between parties on any subject, especially relating to exercising Constitutional authority over Presidential power.
Even Kentucky is close to falling into the same classification as noted above except that the Executive is currently controlled by a Governor who is a member of the party which is not in control of the legislature, a legislature which is overwhelmingly controlled by one party (32 Republicans, 6 Democrats in the Senate and 80 Republicans, 20 Democrats in the House). Fortunately Kentucky is not yet like 39 other states in which a single party controls the executive and both houses of a bicameral legislature. For Kentucky that could change in 2027 if voters select a Republican governor and do nothing to alter the makeup of the legislature.
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The excesses predicted by Adams are clearly visible in the current federal government where agencies have been gutted and/or filled with individuals whose fealty to the President is guaranteed, where the Supreme Court has been stacked with conservative justices, three of whom were appointed by President Trump (and were vetted and approved by a Republican-controlled Congress). Where the Federal Reserve is under assault and its independence threatened, and the CDC is subservient to an HHS Department, whose head seems to deny virtually every long-standing proven health initiative.
All these things have taken place with the acquiescence of a complacent Congress, not entirely unlike the parliament of Germany when it conceded virtually all its power to a rising Hitler.
Two of the few instances when the Executive and Legislative branches were controlled by a single party and performed for the benefit of the American people were during World War II, when Roosevelt was supported by a Congress with Democrats in power, and during the Civil War when Lincoln could count on a Republican Congress. But those were special instances, when the country faced a dire peril. Had Congress been much divided in either case, it is easy to question what the outcome might have been in both.
Those cases are not being duplicated now.
Today we have Congress, the Executive and Judiciary branches all being controlled by a single party. This clearly expresses the condition foretold by Adams 250 years ago. It is time to adopt equilibrium again.
