We Just Witnessed an Electoral Regicide

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTGuest EssayNov. 13, 2026, 5:03 a.m. ETCredit...Vivian DehningRussell RileyDr. Riley is a professor at the University of Virginia specializing in presidential oral history.The American political system is enormously elastic. In times of genuine emergency, our institutions have proved themselves remarkably adept at unified action, usually under vigorous presidential leadership. Those are the moments — from wars to terrorist attacks — that are prominent in our history books. Few recognize, however, that our system is just as capable of institutional contraction. When a powerful presidency is no longer seen as necessary, voters know how to end it.This year’s midterms were a rare instance of such a restoration election. They have occurred in the past — after major wars, mostly — when crises have subsided and voters have chosen to restore something approaching status quo antebellum or, as Warren G. Harding put it after World War I, a return to “normalcy.”Most of these elections produced, as happened last week, a loss for the president’s party in both chambers of Congress. In every case, the message has been unmistakable: It’s time to go back to normal procedure and no longer be beholden to the sitting president’s rule. These restorations have been so painful for the incumbent that they are essentially a unique form of American regicide.There have been several restorations throughout American history. Three are especially informative. As the armistice was being prepared to end World War I, President Woodrow Wilson feared that his leadership would be undermined by a midterm change in party control.Wilson had, in recent years, directed the movements of millions of soldiers and sailors; he had confiscated the nation’s railroads for public purpose; his agents instructed Americans how much sugar they were allowed to put in their morning coffee. Still, Wilson found it necessary to go to the American people in the 1918 midterms with an appeal to continue his rule; they refused and sent Republican majorities to each chamber. Wilson, who once had near-dictatorial power, was kneecapped.He subsequently embarked on a vast publicity campaign to salvage his dearest postwar aim: the League of Nations. Unable to pass his signature treaty in Congress, he tried to go directly to the voters to drum up support. It was an exercise in futility that undermined his health and effectively ended his presidency. The institution he bequeathed to his successors in the 1920s was a mere shadow of his wartime office.That situation lasted until the early 1930s. The Great Depression and World War II once again vested exceptional power in the executive. After the war concluded, Harry S. Truman had an awful time of it. The 1946 midterms saw Republicans sweep Democrats out of power, not unlike the defeat Winston Churchill suffered across the Atlantic.“For President Truman, the postwar period did not simply arrive,” his biographer Robert Donovan wrote, but “broke about his head with thunder, lightning, hail, rain, sleet, dead cats, howls, tantrums and palpitations of panic.” Truman himself half-joked, “I’m telling you, I find peace is hell.”Like Wilson, Truman still had two years to go. In 1948, voters would elect him to a full term, a byproduct of the emerging Cold War. But a presidency that had controlled a managed economy, mobilized perhaps the largest military effort in history and deployed the deadliest weapon ever assembled was no more. “Our American concept of government rests upon the idea of a dominant Congress,” the new Republican House speaker declared — and quickly set about making it a reality once again.The restoration election after the Cold War came at the expense of Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich’s argument that the country ought to return to a proper constitutional order, one that placed Capitol Hill at the center of political gravity, was persuasive in 1994. The House of Representatives and the Senate came under unified Republican control for the first time since the 1950s. The election had a profound impact on the direction of institutional relations and laid the groundwork for Mr. Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.Of course, President Trump’s claims to emergency leadership did not repeat the usual pattern. His contestable emergencies — including an alleged flood of illicit drugs across the Canadian border and a threat to the “free expression rights of United States persons” by Brazil — bore no resemblance to Pearl Harbor or the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Crisis normally makes the president, not vice versa. Mr. Trump’s advisers no doubt had read their primers on American politics and knew that their constant declarations of emergencies would help them avoid those pesky checks and balances that typically constrain presidential behavior. A friendly Congress barely noticed. A new, oppositional one will.Before last week, Americans could not be sure if Mr. Trump’s artificial emergencies would end, as all legitimate emergencies have, with the American people energizing the independent legislative branch. But on Nov. 3, they asserted their rights; Mr. Trump’s emergency claims will no longer be his alone to make.One might think that the magnitude of his defeat would moderate Mr. Trump’s aggressive unilateralism. The early signs are not encouraging.The president, by one account, “must exercise power alone.” One observer noted that the president is known to anger at any challenge to his authority and “his will must prevail.” Those words were written not about Mr. Trump, but Woodrow Wilson. This history is decidedly unhelpful to Mr. Trump. As Wilson discovered, a restoration Congress will not share the president’s sense of urgency. Any emergency the president now asserts will be understood as a direct affront to a congressional majority that is unlikely to take intrusions on its turf lightly.Events, of course, might have other ideas. The Cold War very likely saved Truman’s presidency; an unexpected event could do the same for Mr. Trump. A lesson of history is that no election — and no set of conditions — is ever permanent. We are always one war, or one peace, away from a profoundly different institutional equilibrium.When Mr. Trump’s term expires, some candidates will doubtless attempt to follow in his footsteps and seek to turn an overweening presidency to non-Trumpian ends. Those opportunists would use his excesses as guideposts, attempting similar action perhaps on health care, affordability or business regulation. Others will remain committed to time-tested constitutionalism and return fully to a system of separate institutions sharing power — including a robust executive, but only when it is needed.The constitutionalists have the better of the arguments. Our history amply demonstrates that Americans are functionally believers in Madisonian separation of powers, even if they don’t realize it, repeatedly dividing the government against itself to compel compromise and consensus instead of seeking always the efficient rule of one. That’s the very source of restoration elections.This year’s midterms are a vivid reminder, then, that for all its deficiencies, a separated system of government has proved both durable and self-correcting. It is precisely our ability to rein in the presidential license to dictatorial power, whether issued under false pretenses or legitimate strain, that keeps Americans ready to deploy a dominant presidency again when conditions genuinely demand it.Related ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT