During the debate in Las Vegas, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Jim Webb how, if were he elected, “he would not be a third term for Obama.” Webb said that “there would be a major difference between my administration and the Obama administration,” and it would concern “the use of executive authority.”

Here Webb was raising President Obama’s pronounced tendency to make law by means of executive action, the instruments of which include executive orders, presidential memorandums, agency directives and guidance. Obama contends that there has been sufficient legal authority for his unilateral governance, and that he has resorted to it only because Congress has failed to act. Obama’s most contested executive actions have been taken in the areas of immigration and health care.