A NY Times analysis of "Cato", an observer in the late 18th century, whose prescient fears realized the fatal danger of a Trump and his abuses of power in his second term
John Raymaker
One Sentence in the Constitution Is Causing America Huge Problems
By David French
Opinion Columnist
On Nov. 8, 1787, a pamphleteer who wrote under the pseudonym Cato published one of the most prescient warnings in American history.
Cato looked at the proposed Constitution and declared that it might well turn into a vehicle for tyranny.
He didn’t see a Constitution of enumerated rights that sharply limited the power of the president. Instead, he saw a Constitution that granted the president such sweeping authority “that if the president is possessed of ambition, he has power and time sufficient to ruin his country.”
In other words, he could see a man like Donald Trump coming, and Cato knew the Constitution could not prevent his rise.
We’re not sure who Cato was; some historians believe he was George Clinton, then the governor of New York. But we know he was an antifederalist, and the antifederalists are remembered as the losers of one of the most important arguments of the American founding, the argument over the ratification of the Constitution.
In some respects, however, the antifederalists were right, and it’s important that we remember their words and heed their warnings.
Like many Americans, I find myself in the curious position of both revering the Constitution as a world-historical document that advanced liberty and justice and recognizing that it contains a number of flaws. Many of the Constitution’s flaws remain hidden when America is governed by decent men but become obvious and dangerous when it is not. Poor character creates a constitutional stress test, and it can reveal fatal defects in much the same way that a physical stress test can expose flaws in your heart.
And nowhere are those flaws more apparent than in Article II, the article that created the American presidency. We should consider a change.
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Pierre Whalon
Le 22 août 2025 à 08:53, 'John Raymaker' via Lonergan_L <loner...@googlegroups.com> a écrit :
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