It Didn't Start with Barack Obama America is well on her way to becoming a banana republic. With presidents signing patently unconstitutional legislation, refusing to enforce laws they don't like, and even making appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate, it's clear that the federal Republic our Constitution established is hanging by a thread. And yet the chances that a president who has flouted our founding document and the very rule of law will be impeached are slim to none. Americans seem to have resigned ourselves to the exact form of government that the framersand ratifiers of our Constitution feared most: the tyranny of an elected monarch. The executive branch of the U.S. federal government has grown so far beyond the bounds set for it in ourConstitution that Americans can no longer claim to govern ourselves. We only get the chance to pick the man who will spend four years legislating unilaterally with his pen, waging undeclared wars, and usurping still more powers that the people and the states never delegated to the federal government in the first place. But how did we get here? Step by unconstitutional step, as historian Brion McClanahan reveals in Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America--And Four Who Tried to Save Her. McClanahan's ranking of the presidents is surprising--because he judges them on the only true standard: whether or not they kept their oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."