When Winning Is the Most Dangerous Time

There is a dangerous myth circulating in American politics, and it comes from both sides of the aisle. It goes like this: We won the election. We have the White House, the Senate, and the House. Now we can finally get things done. And every time I hear it, I think of James Madison rolling over in his grave. The separation of powers was never designed to make government efficient. It was designed to make tyranny impossible, even when the majority wants it. The Founders knew something that modern partisans have forgotten: concentrated power is dangerous regardless of which team holds it. The fact that your party swept the election does not mean the Constitution should step aside. It means the Constitution must work harder. This is the dirty little secret of unified government that neither party wants to admit: the most dangerous time for American liberty is when your own side controls everything.

The Founders Were Terrified of Factions

Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that the violence of faction is the greatest threat to republican government. He did not just mean a faction you disagree with. He meant any group of citizens united by a common interest that tramples the rights of others or the permanent interests of the community. What is a unified party controlling all three branches if not a faction with the keys to the castle? The separation of powers, with its bicameral legislature, presidential veto, judicial review, and staggered elections, was the Founders answer to this problem. They deliberately made it hard to pass laws. They forced compromise, deliberation, and most importantly delay. Because haste in government usually means liberty gets run over. As John Adams put it, the Constitution is a government of laws, and not of men. But when one party holds every lever, the men start thinking they are the law. Even Alexander Hamilton, the great champion of energetic government, understood the danger. In Federalist No. 71, he warned that the representatives of the people sometimes may be led astray by the love of power or by the spirit of faction. The separation of powers, he argued, was the safeguard against such moments of passion. The system is built on the assumption that everyone, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, will abuse power if given the chance. The only question is how much the Constitution slows them down.

History Proves the Point

Let us look at what actually happens when one party gets everything it wants. In 1789, the very first Congress, the Federalists controlled everything. And within three years, they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, federal laws that made it a crime to criticize the President or Congress. That is right: the party of Washington and Adams criminalized political speech. It took a change in control, Jeffersons election in 1800, to let those laws expire. In 1861, Lincoln and the Civil War. A Republican President, a Republican Congress. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus unilaterally, shut down opposition newspapers, and arrested thousands of Northern opponents without trial. Was it necessary for preserving the Union? Perhaps. Was it constitutional? The courts said no, but the checks came too late for many. When one party controls everything, the normal brakes fail. In 1933, FDRs New Deal. A Democratic President, a Democratic Congress, and a compliant Supreme Court. Roosevelt proposed the notorious court packing plan, adding up to six new justices to get his way. It failed, but only because a few Democrats in his own party broke ranks. That was a rare instance of Madisons machine working from within.

In 2003, the Bush era. Republicans controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate after a brief switch. The result was the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, a massive new entitlement that grew government exactly the opposite of what conservatives promised. The prescription drug program passed with no hearings, no amendments, and a single roll call vote in the middle of the night. Unified government enabled that. In 2009, the Obama era. Democrats held the White House, the House, and a filibuster proof Senate for a few months. They passed the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote, using special budget reconciliation rules. Whether you love Obamacare or hate it, the process was a textbook example of majority tyranny. The bill was over two thousand pages, and most members had not read it. In 2017, the Trump era. Republicans swept. They cut taxes, confirmed two Supreme Court justices, and tried and failed to repeal Obamacare with a 49 to 51 vote. The failure was a testament to how the system still works: John McCains thumbs down preserved the filibuster in effect. But unified government also enabled the rapid confirmation of lower court judges without the old norms of blue slips and consultation. In 2021, the Biden era. Democrats had the slimmest majorities in history. They still pushed through a 1.9 trillion dollar COVID relief bill via reconciliation, passed a major climate and tax bill the same way, and came within a hair of abolishing the filibuster to pass federal election legislation. Only two Democratic senators saved the Senates institutional integrity. The pattern is unmistakable: every time one party gets full control, it tries to use that control to entrench itself and expand government. The party label changes, the behavior does not.

The Real Enemy: The Administrative State

But the worst violation of separation of powers is not unified government. It is the administrative state, the vast network of federal agencies that combine legislative, executive, and judicial functions in a single body. When the EPA writes a regulation, it is legislating. When it enforces that regulation, it is executing. When it judges violations in its own administrative courts, it is judging. That is precisely what the Founders sought to prevent. The Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. It vests the executive power in the President. It vests the judicial power in the courts. There is no fourth category for unelected bureaucrats. Yet today, the Supreme Court has blessed this arrangement under the nondelegation doctrine, which actually allows Congress to delegate its legislative power to agencies as long as it provides an intelligible principle. That phrase is so broad it has become meaningless. Congress can essentially say, You, EPA, shall regulate pollution in the public interest, and that is considered an intelligible principle.

Hayek warned about this in The Road to Serfdom. When you give a central planner the power to make law, apply law, and judge law, you have created a modern version of the very monarchy the Founders fled. No amount of good intentions or expertise justifies it. The Constitution does not have a we will make an exception for smart people clause. The administrative state operates as a fourth branch of government, answerable to no one, insulated from elections, and wielding enormous power over your life. Whether the President is a Democrat or Republican, the bureaucracy largely does what it wants. This is the permanent unified government that no election can fix. It is the ultimate test of judgment: will we tolerate this violation of the constitutional structure simply because our side benefits from it today? If we do, we will pay the price when the other side takes over and uses the same tools against us.

The Case for Gridlock

Here is the uncomfortable truth that most partisans refuse to accept: gridlock is often the friend of liberty. Thomas Sowell taught us to compare the outcomes of different institutional arrangements. When the system is gridlocked, the federal government is paralyzed, and that means your life, your business, your family, and your local community remain free from Washingtons meddling. The burden of proof should always be on those who want to expand government power, not on those who want to restrain it. The Constitutions difficulty of passage is a feature. The bicameral legislature, the presidential veto, the Senates supermajority rules, the independent judiciary, all of these are speed bumps designed to protect you from the passions of the moment. The government that governs least is not necessarily the one that gets things done. It is the one that respects your autonomy. Milton Friedman said it best: if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand. The more power you concentrate, the more mistakes you make. The separation of powers prevents one faction from imposing its mistakes on everyone.

What You Can Do

If your party wins unified control of Washington, do not celebrate by demanding that the obstructionists get out of the way. Instead, demand that your party respect the Constitution that made victory possible. Support the filibuster. Support bicameralism. Support an independent judiciary. Support federalism and let states govern themselves on most issues. Support the nondelegation doctrine. Hold your own party accountable when it tries to run roughshod over the separation of powers. Because here is the final irony: the next time your party wins everything, the other side will be yelling about unconstitutional power grabs. They will be right. But the time to defend the Constitution is before the power is used against you.

James Madison built a machine that would work even with bad people in charge. The question is whether we have the wisdom, the judgment, to let it work, even when it frustrates our own side. It takes sound judgment to choose restraint over victory, principle over party, liberty over efficiency. That is the kind of judgment we desperately need right now. If we trade the Constitution for efficiency, we will get neither. We will get tyranny, smiling, efficient, and utterly unconstrained. The Founders warned us. They always warned us. It is time we started listening.