How much damage could an "Evil" U.S. President do?

Great Debates
1

Morbid fascination question here that has no political bearing on our current or previous administration(s).

Suppose that someone with deep seeded hatred for our country (terrorist minded) were born and raised in America, and managed the near impossibility of rising into the loftiest of political ranks while the whole time plotting the doom of our country.

Once elected as our President, what could he possibly do to ruin our nation?

I know a lot depends on his approach and how much of his chosen party control Congress, but I ask because I actually do not think he could do much no matter what approach is taken!

He could be very unpopular with domestic issues, vote for horrible ideas or veto good ones (which BTW is happening or not happening now depending upon who you ask) but the President is powerless without Congress and I can only assume (based on common sense) that he would have to pass many fail safes before launching attacks on anything (no nuke button under his desk) :smiley:

Guess this the one reason congressional gridlock is a good thing… :smack:

2

Part of the answer depends on the answer to another question: What would it take for the political party that got the Prez elected to drop support of the Top Gun and join forces with the opposition?

3

He could get us into multiple, open ended wars, trash the economy, attack the constitution, advocate torture and kidnapping, let’s see, what else?

4

An easy way to think about these hypotheticals is to look at real life examples and postulate how things could have been different.

Using Bush as an example, we already know his administration condoned torture, set up black sites around the world, weakened US prestige and influence by using force on every occasion, and illegally attacked critics. By using conservative media, who wanted to be used, they were able to sway public opinion for years to force their agenda, force opposing parties to kowtow to them in fear, all while making the country less safe through corruption and incompetence.

Imagine had Bush been just a little worse. Imagine instead of leaking Valerie Plame’s name, he ordered her husband, the one who criticized the whole Nigeria yellowcake story, arrested for spilling secrets to the enemy. He could have rendered the both of them to a black site, never to be seen again. Congress was in his lap for most of 2001-2005, until the Iraq war started turning badly. Had he actively imposed more media blackouts other than the whole pictures of US coffins, spread more misinformation about how the war was going, how the death rates were, the GOP might have been able to hold on to most of their seats in 2006.

Let’s say gerrymandering happened a few years earlier, and they didn’t lose so many seats. Let’s say the Tea Party never formed and simply those crazy right wing extremists were in Congress just one session earlier. Housing bubble pop, recession happened, yet millionaires and billionaires still got richer and still had their taxes lowered. Just this year, Mitt Romney floated Paul Ryan’s plan, which gave even more tax cuts to the rich and had tax rates for the poor and middle class go up. Let’s say all that happened just a few years earlier.

In one 8 year term, an Evil President can take a hundred billion dollar surplus and turned it into a trillion dollar deficit. Justified American torture, attacked 2 countries, enshrined the right of the rich to exploit the poor, destroyed American prestige and influence, bankrupted the country, threw us into a recession, protected banks over homeowners, pardoned criminals, arrest dissenters, destroy the social safety net, and made laws to ensure they’d be hard pressed to lose another election. That’s probably what an Evil President can do, and more

5

It entirely depends on how much people are willing to work with him and support his decisions. To use an example well in the past, look at Andrew Jackson defying the Supreme Court and starting the Trail of Tears despite it being illegal. If all of his cabinet and the people below him will do what the president says, then the legality doesn’t really mean much.

Realistically, in today’s age, I don’t see much happening. The US is much too polarized and there’s enough media coverage and the internet to keep this sort of thing in check. If the president decided to do anything much outside of what the public thinks ought to be allowed, he could easily get overriden by congress and have very little real power. The only way he’d be able to do anything at that point would be with the military backing him, but I don’t see the military in the US helping to establish a dictatorship.

So, yeah, I’m going to stick with vetoing some bills that shouldn’t be but aren’t quite popular enough to override the veto. He could send troops out to places for certain periods without congressional approval. He could easily work to destroy foreign relations. But the more obvious he was about that sort of stuff, the more the people would resist and the harder it would be to effectively do those things.

6

He can order nukes to be launched. The ‘football’ with the codes is near him all the time.

7

How would he do ANY of that? Short of having access to the nuke room (lol even saying that is funny) and having a willing conspirator or hostage, I do not see him doing anything nefarious on a large scale.

8

There are numerous fail safes and multiple other people involved that must confirm any type of launch. I may be wrong here but I would be shocked if ANY one person could launch nukes.

9

That’s a violation of the War Powers Act, and would rely upon the Secretary of Defense confirming the illegal launch and the miltary proceeding with the illegal order.

10

If the Pres ordered a nuclear launch out of the blue without the nation being at DEFCON 1 I’d hope the rest of the executive office would quickly invoke the 25th Amendment and decide that he had lost his mind and thus was “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

What about being a massive dick to foreign visitors and whilst on foreign visits? Alienating allies would be a good start.

11

Oh, I know; he could also dramatically increase spending (both with the wars, but also with domestically policy… maybe by expanding healthcare coverage for a large fraction of the populace or something), while at the same time decreasing revenue through reducing tax rates.

12

This is the key. The president could, on his own, veto bills that are beneficial, deploy the armed forces for up to 60 days, and antagonize foreign relations.

That’s about it. Anything else would depend on persuading Congress to act a certain way, persuading the public to vote in certain Congressmen or support certain positions, persuading the executive branch to carry out illegal orders, and so on.

So, it comes down to demagoguery as much as ennumerated powers.

And, bear in mind that there is an impeachement process for high crimes and misdemeanors.

13

A lot is going to depend on circumstances. To use an example from history, at various times during the Cold War such an Evil Prez would have had a good chance of being able to start a nuclear war with the USSR. Just imagine such a person as President during the Cuban Missile Crisis for example. Or consider James Buchanan; I’ve heard him blamed in part for the Civil War, and while I’m sure he did what he did out of genuine belief/self interest, if it had been part of an Evil Plan to hurt the US it sure would have counted as a success. Or if Lincoln afterwards had wanted, he could have done tremendous damage by running the war badly on purpose. But right now a nuclear war would be much harder to start, and a civil war pretty much impossible.

I started a thread a few years ago more-or-less on that. Short answer: yeah, he can’t do it alone.

14

Sure. But wouldn’t an evil POTUS nominate an similarly evil person to be Secretary of Defense?

15

I suppose, though this requires an evil cohort and Senate confirmation.

Once Evil POTUS and Evil SecDef authorize a launch, there are still further barriers to actually pressing the launch button:

16

I doubt an ‘evil’ president can do more harm than some of the supposedly non-‘evil’ presidents we’ve already had.

17

Could he repaint the White House black and fly a Jolly Roger from the roof? That’s superficially evil but it would get him a lot of evil street cred

18

Sure, but look at the “FDR caused Pearl Harbor” idea (in which I do not believe, but let’s run with it.) A bad President could botch foreign policy so badly as to paint another, big, powerful country into a corner, so that they made a tragic misstep. This is more likely, given that they probably do not realize it’s what he wanted all along. That would allow him to fling the nukes.

Could “Evil Carter” have gotten away with ordering limited nuclear strikes against Iran in 1977? Or would the failsafes and restrictions have prevented it? Could Evil Truman have launched an all out strike on the USSR over the Berlin Crisis, or on China in the Korean War?

19

MacArthur actually wanted to use nukes in the Korean War, Truman nixed the idea and turfed him out.

Good point though, engineering some sort of Gulf of Tonkin incident with, say, China and souring relations would do some damage.

20

Could he unilaterally pardon every federal criminal?