CHECKS AND BALANCES: Episode Five of The Democracy Test

Truth, Politics and Power

A key innovation of the American constitution, is a system of checks and balances to make sure the President can’t govern like a king. In the next Episode of “The Democracy Test,” co-hosts Neal Conan and Heather Cox Richardson explore how that system works, and what happens when Congress and the courts fail to check the chief executive. The program also delves into the unwritten rules that can lubricate the machinery of government - the “norms,” and finds some unexpected lessons from Watergate, where congress, the courts, the free press and the federal bureaucracy exposed and defeated a criminal president.