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# Fareed Zakaria Makes the Case for Letting Independents Vote in Primaries
- URL: https://ivn.us/fareed-zakaria-makes-the-case-for-letting-independents-vote-in-primaries/
- Published: 2026-09-08T14:39:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-08T14:39:33.000Z
- Description: His CNN special says the US is in the midst of a "super imperial presidency" sliding towards illiberal democracy.
- Author: Steve Peace
- Tags: Commentary, Open Primaries, Election Reform, #Top-Story-3

Anyone who cares about history and the American system of checks and balances ought to consider checking out [Fareed Zakaria's special](https://www.cnn.com/videos/title-2569880?ref=ivn.us) that aired on CNN this week. "The Imperial Presidency" borrows its title from [Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s](https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/national-humanities-medals/arthur-m-schlesinger-jr?ref=ivn.us) 1973 book, written after Watergate, and traces the case back to the Magna Carta and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut to argue that constraining the executive is an eight-century inheritance.

Zakaria argues that constraint is now eroding in a way he calls "unprecedented in scale," with America, the "oldest constitutional democracy in the world," sliding toward illiberal democracy.

He begins in 1215, when the [Magna Carta](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/magna-carta/british-library-magna-carta-1215-runnymede/?ref=ivn.us) first forced a king to accept limits on his power.

Under the [Articles of Confederation](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation?ref=ivn.us), there was no president, and the failure of that weak arrangement led to the [Constitutional Convention](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/convention-and-ratification?ref=ivn.us). The Founders detested monarchy, so what emerged was an executive with checks and balances within a system in which the legislature, in Madison's phrase, "[necessarily predominates](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/james-madison-federalist-no-51-1788?ref=ivn.us)." Madison wanted a genuinely weak president. 

This is why in the Constitution, Congress is Article I, “the first branch” of government. The president's job is to [faithfully execute the laws](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S1-C8-1-3/ALDE%5F00013934/?ref=ivn.us), not to make policy on his own.

## **"In America, the law is King.”**

This design held, more or less, through the nineteenth century. President Lincoln wielded enormous executive power during the Civil War, but that power swung back to Congress once the war ended. Zakaria explains that the balance between Congress and the Executive kept restoring itself until the Cold War, after which it changed.

President Truman started the Korean War without a congressional declaration of war. President Eisenhower toppled Iran's government in a coup. President Johnson had the Gulf of Tonkin. Then came President Nixon, the imperial presidency at full extension: a secret expansion of the war in Vietnam, the impoundment of funds Congress had appropriated, domestic spying, targeting of political enemies, all descending into Watergate.

“[When the president does it, that means it is not illegal](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7352372-when-the-president-does-it-that-means-it-is-not?ref=ivn.us),” Nixon famously said.

Nixon stubbornly refused to turn over the tapes, relenting only under a Supreme Court order, leading to his resignation amid the threat of impeachment.

The pendulum swung back again—a wave of post-Watergate reformers reasserted congressional authority, determined that an imperial presidency would not happen again.

That resolve lasted until the tragedy of 9/11, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney resurrected the "[unitary executive theory](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unitary%5Fexecutive%5Ftheory%5F%28uet%29?ref=ivn.us)," first proposed by Ed Meese, Reagan's second Attorney General. Meese argued that the Founders never wanted a weak president and that the president should have complete control over executive agencies. The Supreme Court killed the extreme version of that theory 7-1 in [*Morrison v. Olson*](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/487/654/?ref=ivn.us), written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, a conservative's conservative, with only Justice Scalia in dissent.

As Secretary of Defense, Cheney had tried to get the first President Bush into the Gulf War without congressional approval, and though Congress approved that war anyway, Cheney said he "would certainly have recommended to the president to go further."

After 9/11, as Vice President to the second President Bush, Cheney saw his opening. Things would "[have to be done quietly, without any discussion](https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html?ref=ivn.us)," he said, effectively a blank check to wage war, with secret legal memos supplying the architecture. Cheney, the broadcast surmises, is responsible for the modern imperial presidency.

President Obama entered office as a constitutional law professor who had criticized Bush's expansions of power. But a Republican Congress refused to work with Obama; indeed, they were openly determined to [make him a one-term president](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/11/when-did-mitch-mcconnell-say-he-wanted-to-make-obama-a-one-term-president/?ref=ivn.us), so they stopped him at every turn.

***“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Senator Mitch McConnell said in 2010.***

In frustration, President Obama declared in 2011, “We can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will," and so he issued executive order after executive order: a 30 percent emissions-reduction target by 2030, a minimum-wage raise for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and a health insurance mandate.

Republicans took to calling him "[King Obama](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/04/27/king-obama-monarch-constitution-column/8312137/?ref=ivn.us)." But it was [DACA](https://www.uscis.gov/DACA?ref=ivn.us) in 2012, deferring deportations, that pushed the GOP over the edge, and Zakaria draws a straight line from that anger to Donald Trump's 2016 “Make America Great Again” message, in which he proclaimed, "I alone can fix it."

President Trump's first term was all about unitary power. He asserted near-absolute control over the executive branch and refused to spend money Congress had legally appropriated, an impoundment championed by [Russell Vought](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/people/russell-vought/?ref=ivn.us), which triggered a [35-day shutdown](https://ffis.org/budget-brief/three-week-cr-ends-government-shutdown/?ref=ivn.us). Congress gave him $1 billion for a border wall. When that wasn’t enough money, Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexican border and [diverted nearly $4 billion from the military budget](https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805796618/trump-administration-diverts-3-8-billion-in-pentagon-funding-to-border-wall?ref=ivn.us) instead. His administration froze roughly $200 million in Ukraine aid while pressuring Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, the episode that got him [impeached](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S4-4-9/ALDE%5F00000035/?ref=ivn.us) but acquitted by a GOP-controlled Senate.

President Biden governed against a totally gridlocked Congress and canceled student loan debt by executive action.

In 2024, the Supreme Court, 6-3, [granted presidents broad immunity](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939%5Fe2pg.pdf?ref=ivn.us) for official acts, prompting Justice Sotomayor's dissent: "[In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supreme-court-gives-president-power-king?ref=ivn.us)."

[Fifty-two criminal charges against Trump](https://ballotpedia.org/Donald%5FTrump%5Findictments,%5F2023-2025?ref=ivn.us) were dropped as a result.

Now, in Trump's second term, Zakaria argues, he has gone further still, eliminating USAID and the Department of Education, openly prosecuting political enemies, what Zakaria frames as a "super-imperial presidency."

## The Super-Imperial Presidency is Our Own Damn Fault

Zakaria's closing diagnosis is that the American downfall is our own fault.

The world adopted the American model of constrained government so completely that Americans now assume the checks and balances will hold on their own, with no one tending them.

He says our assumption that "because it has endured for so long, it needs no repair,” has created an America that is a victim of its own success.

***He says that “we have been slow to scrutinize our own system, recognize its weaknesses, and improve it."***

He claims our shock at Trump’s imperious behavior has "curdled into fatigue."

He says we are guilty of a "failure of imagination" in telling ourselves, "This is America, we're different.”

## The Answer is Nonpartisan Primaries

What Zakaria misses is a) the obvious diagnosis and b) the simple remedy. In his defense, he is not alone. But if he reads the transcript of his own show, he, and the rest of us, will see that the diagnosis is on the tip of his tongue in each succeeding paragraph describing the American journey from the Articles of Confederation to the hopeless partisanship of the moment.

The disease is the same one Zakaria correctly notes was top of mind for the Constitution’s authors: Partisanship.

This is precisely why the Constitution rejected the parliamentary model in which the Chief Executive is selected by the legislative body.

Instead, they created a buffer by melding the Senate and House power balance and delegated that formula to an “Electoral College.”

What they could not account for was the creation of electoral primaries, decades of court decisions, and state legislative rule-making, almost always supported by both major political parties. All of that has been combined with modern communication platforms, conspired to make everything hyper-partisan from messaging to fundraising.

It is the rise of this duopoly, not the particular action of either party, that inevitably led to the rise of the “Imperial Presidency.”

Every single “presidential act” expanding executive power had its origin in a paralyzed Congress.

Zakaria describes this but appears not to appreciate its significance. The truth is that Congress gave away its power so comprehensively that both congressional caucuses see their role as “How do we elect the next president?” rather than “How do we make public policy?”

It is a systemic death spiral that will continue to accelerate until we do one simple thing: abolish closed partisan primaries.

Why? The explanation is as simple as the solution. More than 90 percent of all congressional members win or lose their seats, not in general elections when everyone is allowed to vote, but in low-turnout primaries where the most emotionally partisan voters dominate and independent voters are generally prohibited from participating.

It should surprise no one that politicians who want to keep their jobs do so by pandering to their most strident voters, who control primary outcomes that seem to produce general-election runoffs between “two bad choices.” The more perverse consequence is the paralyzed “do nothing” Congress that leads inevitably to the Imperial Presidency.

Zakaria is not alone in looking past the obvious. Perhaps the most bizarre example is the DSA platform that calls for the elimination of the entire constitutional system in favor of a Parliamentary Congress that would, in turn, select a “President” (more accurately, “Prime Minister”). In classic unintended consequence fashion, the DSA proposal compounds every problem the left is concerned about: A do-nothing Congress now selects a do-nothing executive, cementing a status quo that the left surely does not intend to perpetuate.

A Congress full of members who only survive re-election by pleasing or obstructing a president cannot legislate and will remain weak.

The immigration bill in February 2024 is the clearest recent example of this. A bipartisan group of senators wrote the most conservative immigration package in a generation, and it collapsed within days after presidential candidate Trump told Republicans in Congress not to hand the sitting president (Biden) a win.

Trump's hold on Congress works through closed primaries. It is how John Cornyn lost a Texas runoff after twenty-four years in the Senate once Trump endorsed his opponent, and how everyone else in the building learned what crossing him costs. He is not going to give that up.

The solution is to allow Congress the independence to reassert itself as the first branch.

A member who only answers to a closed party electorate has every reason to protect a president or presidential candidate of their own party.

A member who answers to everyone in the district does not.

If you want to do something about the imperial presidency, start by letting independents vote.

Open every election, primary and general, to every voter, so that power rests with the individual citizen rather than with membership in one of the two major parties. That is what makes a member of Congress accountable to voters rather than to a president or a party base.

Gallup found last year that 45 percent of American adults call themselves independents, the highest figure it has ever recorded.

Let independents vote in primaries. It requires no constitutional amendment, no new method of counting ballots, and no new form of government, and it does not ask voters to learn anything. Washington, California, and Alaska already hold nonpartisan primaries in which every candidate appears on a single ballot, and every voter can cast it.

The figure who has carried opposition to nonpartisan primaries to its logical extreme is Donald Trump. That places him in the same position as parts of the left that resist real primary reform in favor of more elaborate fixes: proportional representation, sprawling packages intricate enough that their advocates spend most of their energy arguing with one another over the details.

What the two have in common is a reluctance to let the public decide and a belief that they understand the problem better than ordinary voters do. Opening primaries assumes the opposite: that a larger electorate makes better decisions than a small group of insiders.

A Congress chosen only by a closed partisan base has every incentive to shield a president of its own party rather than defend the institution. A Congress chosen by every voter in the district lacks that incentive. Open the primaries, and Congress has reason to remember what it was designed to be.