As a general rule, when folks with whom you disagree are themselves in self-destructive disagreement with each other, the last thing you want to do is interfere.

However, for every general rule there are exceptions.

A recent column in the Tribune by an enthusiastic supporter of the current president is a case in point.

Surprisingly perhaps, there were portions of the column with which I fully concur.

For example, I agree in the writer’s criticism of congressional Republicans who, for seven years, perpetrated a fraud on the American people that was largely successful. Using the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a political club with which to beat the previous tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and all members of his party), promising to have a better deal for the American people and then proving to have none at all, was, indeed, political chicanery of the highest, or perhaps lowest, order.

Who says the right and the left cannot find common ground?

On the other hand, the overall “flavor” of the piece made me more than a little bit uneasy.

Perhaps I misinterpreted what the author of the column was trying to say, but the message I got was that the president, as CEO of our country, has a right to expect that all other governmental institutions, even those established by the Constitution, should get out of the great man’s way, fall in line behind him, let him work his magic as he deems appropriate, and support him in his efforts with little or no exceptions being made.

This is certainly a point of view, but I believe it is a point of view at odds with our foundational document, the United States Constitution.

If there is a theme that permeates that document, that theme is that power should be diffused, not concentrated.

It is for that reason that power is divided between three branches of government. That is why the prerogatives of each are specified. That is why we often have an uncomfortable, but nevertheless intended, tension between the three branches – what you learned in government class were called “checks and balances.”

We appear to have in Washington a chief executive, and his apologists and partisans, who seem to believe his election victory gives him the right, a mandate, to expect that even pre-existing governmental institutions should defer to his will.

This is the opposite of the framers’ intentions in drafting the document. Clearly, their intent was that transient holders of the Office of President would adjust their will to the strictures set out in the document.

Remember, at the time, there was another “great man.” His name was George Washington. He had near unanimous support. He became our first president, without opposition in the Electoral College.

Yet even he was subject to constitutional limitations on his exercise of presidential power – limitations he supported as he took the long view of what the new United States should be.

The Constitution is an exercise in the avoidance of extremes. At times, it appears to be a hindrance to action, and in fact, it does operate as a hindrance to precipitous unilateral action. That was the idea. If this can be the source of frustration in specific situations, it is also the price we pay to be able to accommodate, and bridge, the passing passions of the day.

The present administration’s inner circle, not to mention the president himself, does not seem to have grasped this basic fact. Until, and unless, this happens, our president will continue to bumble his way from one embarrassing gaffe to the next.

A “great man,” and unquestioning adherence to his whims, is a theory of government more acceptable in Pyongyang or Moscow.

But not here. Not yet.