Because the myth is gone. Presidents have always been restrained by their own willingness not to abuse their power. This willingness was based on two beliefs that Trump has proven mistaken over the last 10 years:

1) Congress will come together to impeach and remove a rogue president, even if he is from their party. This is not true anymore, the impeachment clause is inoperable due to party polarization.

2) The President is liable for any crimes committed in office after he leaves. Merrick Garland proved this wrong after he failed to prosecute Trump for the crime of fomenting insurrection, and then SCOTUS gave Trump and all future presidents an almost impossible shield for future prosecutors to overcome in the form of "presidential immunity".

So unless something changes, the next and all future presidents will have carte blanche to wield the DOJ and FBI to attack his personal political rivals. He can impound and reallocate any Congressionally allocated funds toward implementing his ideological goals, and he can defund any programs he doesn't personally like. He can withhold funding and clearances for companies, lawfirms, and universities unless they implement his agenda. He can send the US army into US states to enforce his agenda. He can withhold disaster relief from areas he deems not politically loyal enough. He can take huge equity stakes of companies he deems nationally critical.

These are all powers POTUS has now, and they will remain powers POTUS until he's prevented from using them.

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paxys 2 days ago | parent [-]

Again, you are assuming that Congress and SCOTUS will stay consistent in their behavior when there's a new President. The exact same Senate and House that exists today will impeach the next Democratic President in seconds should he/she repeat 1% of what Trump has done since taking office. And every executive action of theirs will be blocked by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote.

	▲	rootusrootus 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you should expand your line of thought. Think like MAGA in this situation. If you are a Democratic politician with no scruples and a drive to implement your agenda, what could you do? Assume for the sake of argument that you were swept into office on a tide of anti-Trump backlash and you have a majority in Congress. You could start by passing legislation and excluding it from judicial review under Article III. After all, as you say, the SCOTUS would otherwise vote along their own ideological lines against everything you want to do. Sure, SCOTUS and others will undoubtedly howl that Marbury gives the court the right to judicial review, but you would not be the first president to ask the court "with what army?" We are at a crossroads. Will the Democratic Party see itself as responsible for conserving the republic and push the government back towards something boring and sane? Can such a party actually get elected today? I have this suspicion that a lot of people think so, especially MAGA -- they [mostly] cannot conceive that the opposition can turn the tables and use identical tactics on them, so they feel like the current situation is a temporary but crucial win only for them, which will move the Overton window to the right. But what if there is really a sea of anger boiling below the surface right now just waiting to be tapped by a Democratic demagogue? Could get exciting.
	▲	ModernMech 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't think so, I think I'm accounting for the recent shift in realpolitik. Why would future Democrats impeach their own POTUS for using the DOJ and FBI to arrest their political enemies? The Democratic party as you knew it is dead; it died in 2024, just as the Republican party as your knew it died in 2020. The Republican party has been reformed into the MAGA party, which bears no resemblance to the neocon Republicans of the 2000s. Just the same, the Democratic party will reform but they will not resemble the party of Clinton/Obama/Biden/Pelosi/Schumer. They are done as a political force. Moreover, why wouldn't a future POTUS start off by arresting the current conservative SCOTUS judges? Decide on the arrest, make up a pretext, if US attorneys don't comply just fire them until you find one that does, like what they're doing to Comey right now. Make some vacancies and then appoint his own court. Or, just ignore them entirely, there are no consequences for not following their orders.