Author of the article seems to be splitting hairs to me.
Is the President the Chief (no one higher) Executive (not judicial, not legislative) Officer? Sure.
Is the President constitutionally recognized as the Commander-in-Chief? Yes.
So nit picking of the use of the terms seems like semantics to me.
The president is the chief executive officer of the
government, executive branch. He isn't the chief executive of
the people.
The president is the commander-in-chief of the
armed forces. He isn't the commander-in-chief of
the people. And
there is a catch even to his being commander-in-chief of the armed forces, strictly speaking:
The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the
several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the
principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices,
and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of
impeachment.---Article II, Section 2, the Constitution.
By the way, Article II, Section 3 calls for the president, and I quote, to
recommend to their consideration such measures
as he shall judge necessary and expedient/ That's
recommend; that's not,
pass this bill I've come up with, that's
an order. It is a grotesque constitutional distortion for
any president to
demand of
any Congress that it pass
any legislation he might devise and recommend, regardless of the president, regardless of the Congress.
It was just as grotesque a constitutional distortion for His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow Dr. Barack Obama Dada,
COD, RIP, LSMFT, Would-Have-Been Life President of the Republic Formerly Known as the United States, to all but order
his Congresses to "do the right thing" (
oy, how I used to want to retch whenever I heard His Excellency say it that way!)
and pass whatever legislation he dreamed up, as it would be for Donaldus Minimus to dream up one or another piece of legislation
and all but order his Congress to "pass it, or else," or however he might choose to phrase it.
Any Congress is within its constitutional mandate to tell any president to go to hell, figuratively speaking, any time any
president does anything more than order it to vote on one or another bill he dreams up; no Congress is constitutionally
required to do anything with any measure any president recommends other than consider it.
Further from the original article:
[T]oo many people keep calling the president—this president and previous presidents—
”my commander in chief” or something similar. Again it’s important for our understanding of a
constitutional republic to be clear on these points. The president is the chief executive of the
federal government. He is the commander in chief of the armed forces, not of the entire govern-
ment and definitely not of 320 million U.S. citizens . . .
. . . The highly experienced former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton for instance, who declared last year on the campaign trail, “Donald Trump simply
doesn’t have the temperament to be president and commander in chief of the United States.” (She
had also used the term a year earlier, and in her previous campaign she expressed a determination
to be the “commander in chief of our economy,” so this wasn’t just a slip of the tongue.)
And also third-generation Navy man, senator, and presidential nominee John McCain who declared
his support for President George W. Bush in 2007, saying, the Washington Post reported: “There’s
only one commander in chief of the United States, and that’s George W. Bush” . . .
. . . This is a constitutional republic, and we don’t have a commander in chief.
That’s an important distinction, and it’s disturbing that even candidates for the presidency miss it. Hillary
Clinton may well have wanted to be commander in chief of the whole country, of you and me, and to direct
us and our economic activities the way the president directs the officers and soldiers of the armed forces.
But if so, she would have needed to propose an amendment to the Constitution—an amendment that would
effectively make the rest of the Constitution irrelevant, since it was designed as a Constitution for a limited
government of a free people.
Donald Trump is not my commander in chief. Neither was Barack Obama. Each was elected president,
charged with leading the executive branch of the federal government.
For the record, I had a commander-in-chief
once. When I was in the Air Force, from 1982-1987. (My
CIC was re-elected in 1984.) I didn't have one prior to joining the Air Force, and I no longer had one
after I was honourably discharged.
