The Point of “Commander-In-Chief”
By Anthony | July 25th, 2008 | 7:06 amJosh Marshall makes a great point about our elevation of the “Commander-in-Chief” role of the President:
We need to re-familiarize ourselves with the fact that the point of the constitution’s explicitly giving the president the title of commander-in-chief was not to make him into a quasi-military figure. It was precisely the opposite — to create no doubt that the armed forces answered not to a chief of staff or senior general or even a Secretary of Defense (originally, Secretaries of War and Navy) but to a civilian elected officeholder who operates with the constrained and limited power of that world rather than the unbound authority of military command.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I thought we got that in sixth grade, but I guess a reminder couldn’t hurt.