Firing for Effect, Not Range: Pence at Hillsdale

Mike Pence spoke at Hillsdale yesterday.

...unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rush toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations

But, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. And what the nation says -- the theme of this address... What it says, informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature's God... What it says quite naturally and rightly, if not always gracefully, is that we as a people are not to be ruled and not to be commanded. It says that the president should never forget this; that he has not risen above us, but is merely one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution

Get it, Barak?

But lest you think that Pence was merely partisan, read this:

...Under either party, presidents have often forgotten that they are intended to restrain the Congress at times, and that the Congress is independent of their desires. And thus fused in unholy unity, the political class has raged forward in a drunken expansion of powers and prerogatives, mistakenly assuming that to exercise power is by default to do good.

Umnnhhh, yah. No Child, the Poison Lightbulbs,...

And a monitum worthy of Cicero:

It is a tragedy indeed that new generations taking office attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it.

This guy gets it.