It is clear from listening to the case made in the Senate by President Trump’s lawyers that their defense of his conduct relies on a highly expansive assertion of executive power. Their theory of an uber-powerful president is constitutionally bogus and, worse, quite dangerous.

To be clear, I write this as a particularly avid disciple of James Madison’s distrust of highly centralized power wherever it occurs. “It will not be denied,” he wrote, “that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”