How Did Obama Become Our Most Imperial President?

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On the other hand, the power of the president as commander-in-chief has never been greater.  If Obama is the president of next to nothing on the domestic policy front (but fundraising for his second term), he has the powers previously associated with the gods when it comes to war-making abroad.  There, he is the purveyor of life and death.  At home, he is a hamstrung weakling, at war he is -- to use a term that has largely disappeared since the 1970s -- an imperial president.

Such contradictions call for resolution and that should worry us all.