I’ve seen a lot of worry about this, but it strikes me as investing the presidency with the same godlike power our current officeholder seems to think it has.
So I thought I’d ask the Dope to lay it out for me. If any president wanted to do what’s described in the subject line, how could he go about it? Obviously, having the military unquestioningly on your side gets past a lot of barriers, but I hope you realize the spirit in which I ask the question.
Lots and lots of different possibilities.
Is the guy wildly popular with the people? He might simply be acclaimed as unquestioned leader, and the small number of people who don’t love him can just lump it.
Or he might have a terribly effective secret police, with assassins and goons, and people are afraid to oppose him, because they get disappeared.
He might have a large private army, or the support of a big part of the regular army.
He might have a major religious denomination behind him, with damnation assured for those who dissent.
In the U.S. there are too many safeguards. The military isn’t interested. The Secret Service wouldn’t put up with it. The courts decide legality, the Congress has the purse-strings, the individual states have their national guard militias, and, finally, we have a very interested and involved populace.
(And I’m probably completely missing what you actually wanted as an answer.)
Start reading about emergency powers of the President:
Luckily, the US military is firmly committed to supporting the Constitution. The President would not get any support from them, which would make it hard to declare martial law.
Since the Constitution gives the president no such explicit emergency powers, this must be speculative. Let’s move this to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Which is funny, because that fact is part of what I wanted to find out to begin with. Thanks! 
When I was in the military(U.S.A.F.) I don’t recall receiving any special training on what was Constitutional and what wasn’t-only vague instructions about not following any orders that were illegal.
I would hope the instruction on what’s legal and not legal, as well as the specificity of said instruction, would change a bit the higher you go up the food chain.
Better than the President’s you would hope.
It’s hard to go wholesale dictator in our system. The furthest you can probably go is during wartime, an I don’t mean Iraq or Vietnam, but Great War, Civil War, or WW2 level mayhem. During those wars, dissent was quashed in many ways and economic regulation was pretty close to totalitarian. But our system of elections survived and normalcy tended to return pretty quickly.
It’s difficult for an American president to become a full-on dictator because of the decentralized nature of our system, but anyone who believes it’s outright impossible is being dangerously naive.
Required reading: It Can’t Happen Here
Although, to be honest, Sinclair Lewis stole his material from the anti-fascist writings of his wife, Dorothy Thompson.
I’m not so convinced it can’t happen in the US. Americans are people just like everybody else, despite their appeals to exceptionalism. The US was recently downgraded to a flawed democracy due to an ongoing lack of confidence in the institution of democracy. You combine a view that democracy just doesn’t work anymore, and the right leader, with the right platform and a little bit of success, and you can get people to agree to just about anything.
Humans are really weird. I’m sure you’ve heard of the psychology experiment where the experimenters took regular normal college students and divided them into guards and prisoners. The guards started abusing the prisoners. But remember these weren’t prisoners. They were just college kids. Or a school teacher in California that tried to each kids a lesson about fascism and ended up creating a fascist state in the class overnight.
Yeah, make no mistake it can definitely happen. I’m not saying it is happening. I’m not saying it is going to happen. But I think it is wise to be watchful and make sure it doesn’t happen.
To sadly bring this into the real word, I wouldn’t be too worried about Trump. In my view, Trump is driven by ego not ideology. The person to watch out for is Steven Bannon. He’s the one driven by ideology.
What it all boils down to is this – with the cooperation or silent acceptance by the rest of the Federal government, the President can do anything.
I have no faith in McConnell or Ryan doing anything to stop Trump’s agenda. I do still have faith that John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and the four liberal justices will prevent the worst abuses Trump can dream up from actually becoming law. I have no such faith in Alito and Thomas and likely won’t in Scalia’s replacement. I foresee a lot of 6-3 decisions going against Trump in the SCOTUS, and that’s probably the only thing protecting us at this point.
All it would take would be a major “terrorist attack” within the USA, or a set of coordinated attacks. Perhaps one of them, sadly, might take out the President’s wife. Millions of Americans would feel great sympathy for him and would be willing to let him–just temporarily, of course!–shut down Congress and the Supreme Court and elections (we can’t really afford such luxuries in wartime).
Recall George W. Bush’s approval ratings just before 9/11, as contrasted with after 9/11. People react to perceived danger with a great affection for The Strong Leader who will Keep Us Safe.
Trump is driven by a wish that no one criticize him, and that he be freed from boring political wrangling with Congress.
That’s enough to get him firmly behind any plans that would place him in the seat of unchallenged power.
This is why I am actually greatly relieved that the Trump administration seems to have such a frosty relationship with the Intelligence apparatus, and the upper echelons of the military. If tries to majorly overstep his bounds, someone’s going to tell him no, and with a net -8% approval rating, he isn’t going to get a wave of public support manning the barricades.
…I don’t think the plan would be to “suspend the constitution.” The plan would be to simply ignore it: or to pay lip service to it. While at the same time waging a full-scale propaganda campaign. With photo opportunities of “fake files” and press conferences full of “alternative facts.”
Would that work? Well, we may well be watching it happen in real-time. So I’ll let you know tomorrow.
To their credit, both McConnell and Ryan say they will not change the laws regarding torture.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/torture-law-gop-no-change-234212