Politics & Power Quote by James Bovard

Power, in Bovard's telling, isn't just centralized; it's gone feral. The image of a "leash" does more than suggest restraint. It implies an animal instinct in government: something that, left untethered, doesn't merely sit there accruing authority politely. It lunges. That choice of metaphor is the point. He's not arguing about a discrete policy failure; he's arguing about a structural condition where control mechanisms (Congressional oversight, courts, public skepticism, even bureaucratic limits) have frayed to the point of symbolism.

The most telling move is his shift from "so much power concentrated" to "getting momentum". Concentration sounds static, like a pile. Momentum is kinetic, a machine picking up speed. Bovard is diagnosing an accelerant built into the modern presidency: crises that justify executive action, partisan incentives that reward unilateral wins, and an administrative state that can implement sweeping change without the slower, messier rituals of legislation. Each president inherits the expanded toolkit, then adds another attachment before handing it off. The ratchet only turns one way.

The subtext is as accusatory as it is bleak: Americans aren't simply governed by powerful leaders; they're habituated to being governed this way. Bovard's libertarian skepticism toward state power lurks under every clause, but he frames it as a bipartisan problem, not a single villain. The "situation" Americans "face" reads like a warning about civic drift: if no one insists on the leash, the dog doesn't learn manners on its own.