There is no bigger story right now than that of the American Presidency.  A public debate among two men who would be the leader of the free world will almost always do that.

When the leaders of one party’s presumptive nominee – who also currently holds that office and thus the nuclear football, among many other powers and responsibilities – openly question their candidate’s fitness for office, it is news. Real. News.

In theory, President Biden’s debate performance is something that can blow over.  Wheels began to turn quickly during the debate – with some even pointing to evidence that the move to replace him began even before the candidates took the stage.  As of this writing, Biden’s family has tried to assure Democratic leaders and donors that he was their best option to maintain the White House. 

Time will tell if they and their inner circle have been persuasive.  Changes in absolute power like this come about much in the same way Hemmingway wrote about going bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We’re not going to go much farther down this path of speculation here, for a couple of reasons.  If “suddenly” were to take hold, any speculation you would be reading here could be out of date before these words reach print.  Too many are focused on the prurient nature of these events, whose importance transcends any entertainment value rooted in partisan purposes.

Let’s remind ourselves that our enemies aren’t so much rooting for one candidate or another.  They first and foremost want a divided country, which for any democratically elected republic means a weak country.  We must force ourselves to think about our situation as a country in the weeks and months ahead, and not on the jerseys we wear as partisans.

Too many of us have become obsessed with Presidential elections as the end all, be all of our civic participation. Our founding fathers saw a model that was opposite of that.  

A quarter millennium ago as our country was being founded, citizens knew their locals. Local officials held sway on important government decisions, and the people then elected a few of them whom they trusted and respected to let a federal government provide for a national defense, a few other necessary items, and otherwise stay out of the way. 

We’ve not only let our public discourse become all about the Presidency, but have let the actual framework of governance diminish the roles of the other two branches of governance in deference to it as well.  For this reason, a major Supreme Court ruling last week was likely as important as the contest for who will actually run the executive branch tomorrow or in twenty years. 

The ruling in a case brought by a New Jersey fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, against the U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.  Loper Bright is in the herring business, and as such they’re regulated under a 1976 law by Marine Fisheries Service, who reports to Secretary Raimondo.

In 2013, the Marine Fisheries Service decided that they needed to put more monitors on actual fishing boats, and worked until 2020 to write and implement their own rules to do so.  “Rules” have the effect of law, except they don’t have to pass either house of Congress nor get signed off by a President.  Schoolhouse Rock didn’t ever sing about this.

The 2020 rule mandated not only that each fishing vessel would have to have a monitor, but that the owners of the boats would have to pay for it.  Essentially, fishing companies were to pay about $700 per boat per day so that the federal government could regulate them.

Under a 1984 ruling in a case involving Chevron against the National Resources Defense Council, the precedent has been that when regulatory authority given to an agency (and thus the administrative branch) has been ambiguous, the agency has clear rule making authority that must be upheld by the courts. 

As was noted in a post by former FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the Chevron precedent had major issues that greatly expanded the power of the presidency over the other two branches of government.  Chevron didn’t require a plain reading of the authority given to an agency by congress.  Any ambiguity in the law – including silence – was given to the side of the President’s cabinet appointee. 

In the Loper case, there was no taxing authority given to the Marine Fisheries Service.  But when unelected bureaucrats decided they needed a bigger budget, they wrote their own rule to bypass Congress and the Constitutionally authorized appropriations process to expand the power, size, and scope of their agency.  The Loper ruling restores the proper roles of each.

Overturning the Chevron precedent is a good start to put the executive branch back into the role it constitutionally was designed to administer.  For those watching the debate with horror that one (or both) of the participants will be our next President, your good news is that their powers have been at least slightly curtailed going forward.