Arthur M. Schlesinger jnr, in his foreword to The Imperial Presidency, said "The American Constitution was established, for better or worse, on an idea new to the world ... the idea of the separation of powers".
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The book, published in 1973 and influenced by the concentration of power in the hands of the president during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years, argued the founding fathers were more concerned with precluding "the exercise of arbitrary power" than anything else.
Or, as the 51st Federalist Paper made clear, each of the three branches of government - the executive, the legislative and the judiciary - were given the "necessary constitutional means ... to resist encroachments of others".
That is why, during his first term, president Donald Trump was not able to ride roughshod over the machinery of government to impose his whims on the nation.
But much has changed since 2016. President Joe Biden's cognitive decline is almost universally acknowledged. Trump's stocks were buoyed by the assassination attempt and the Republican juggernaut seems unstoppable.
Court hearings have seen President Trump granted qualified immunity for acts in office and resulted in charges of illegally retaining classified documents being dismissed.
He was given a hero's welcome at the Republican National Conference where he announced Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance as his running mate.
Even if President Biden stood aside in favour of another candidate, almost certainly Vice-President Kamala Harris, the damage has been done. While Trump's loyalists and sympathisers can't wait for the polls to open, the Democrats are in an uphill battle to get out their vote. Even their most ardent partisans find either another term for a failing Biden or a first term for an as yet largely untested Harris uninspiring.
There is every reason to expect President Trump and the Republicans will make a clean sweep of the Presidency and both houses of Congress come November. People who don't turn out to vote for either Biden or Harris won't be voting for other Democrats lower down the ticket.
The third branch of government, the judiciary, which had a distinctly Democratic leaning when Trump took office in 2017, is now stacked with Republican-leaning Trump appointees.
The constitutional checks and balances put in place by Washington, Jefferson and their peers more than 250 years ago will mean little if one man has his hands on all the levers of government. Nobody, not even Franklin D Roosevelt, has had as much power as Trump seems likely to possess after next year's inaugural.
This, given President Trump's well-documented unpredictably, refusal to listen to others and to take counsel, purely transactional approach to government - and everything else, and the determination of many lurking in the background of the next Republican administration to dismantle the machinery of government (which they deride as "the deep state") is a frightening prospect.
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A Donald Trump who does not have to worry about another term, is determined to square the ledger by going after those who he believes have conspired against him, and has raised nepotism and influence peddling to a level not seen since the days of the Borgias and Medicis, won't respect individuals, institutions or the interests of other nation states including America's allies.
This, after all, is the man who said he would be happy for Russia to do whatever it liked to any NATO member that, in his opinion, wasn't pulling its weight.
Will the US constitution be able to survive an "imperial" Trump presidency? Only time will tell.