Americans Don’t Want a Dictatorship, but They’re Creating One Anyway
Whether a glass is half full or half empty is a matter of perspective. The same can be said about the half of Americans who oppose the idea of allowing presidents to rule unilaterally—an exercise of monarchical power favored by only a fifth of us. I like to look on the bright side, so I take it as a win that those opposing unrestrained executive power far outnumber those who favor it. Still, it would be better if, in a republic established two and a half centuries ago, more than half the population would commit to the proposition that turning the country into a dictatorship would be bad.
Opponents of Dictatorship Outnumber Supporters
“About half of the public think it would be a bad idea if the next president is able to act on important policy issues without the approval of Congress or the courts,” the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reports of the results of a survey of 1,282 adults conducted March 21-25. “Only 21% think it would be a good thing, and about 30% think it’s neither good nor bad.”
In the poll, 48 percent overall oppose unilateral presidential rule, including 58 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans. The 21 percent favoring the idea include 17 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Republicans. Support for unrestrained executive power rises to 39 percent among Democrats in the case of a Biden win in November, and to 57 percent of Republicans if Trump wins.
Interestingly, the AP-NORC results are nearly identical to those found by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics in 2021. At the time, pollsters reported “roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a ‘President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts.'” Among Biden voters, 22 percent strongly agreed with the idea, compared to 19 percent of Trump voters (over 40 percent of both at least “somewhat agreed” with the idea of an unrestrained presidency).
In 2020, the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group noted: “Over three annual surveys, about 24 percent of Americans say that a ‘strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections’ is a good way to govern a country.”
The good news here is that surveys find a pretty consistent minority of only one-fifth to one-quarter of Americans favor throwing off this whole separation of powers thing in favor of dictatorship. It’s a fraction of the population that seems firm in its batty beliefs but doesn’t appea
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