The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency

by John Dickerson

Lockstep unity between a president and members of Congress in the same party would lead to “the malignant growth of personal power,” warned Hoover. “Liberty never dies from direct attack. No man ever arises and says ‘Down with Liberty.’ Liberty has died in 14 countries in a single score of years from weakening its safeguards, from demoralization of the moral stamina of the people….If we examine the fate of wrecked republics throughout the world we find their first symptoms in the weakening of the legislative arm. Subservience in legislative halls is the spot where liberty and political morals commit suicide.”