When Armed Men Enter the Legislature

“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action.”

—George Washington, address to Congress resigning his commission, December 23, 1783

February 9, 2020. San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

Soldiers entered the Legislative Assembly.

In uniform and carrying automatic weapons, they stood in the aisles and among the legislators' seats. Many members had stayed away. President Nayib Bukele entered the chamber accompanied by armed personnel, walked to the seat of the assembly's presiding officer, and sat down.

It was not the president's chair.

Bukele bowed his head and prayed for several minutes. When he rose, he said he had been speaking with God, who had told him to be patient.¹

The constitution remained in place. The president had been elected, and so had the legislators. The assembly had not formally been abolished. Voting procedures had not disappeared from the law. Every piece of institutional furniture was still in the room.

Someone had simply brought in the army and taken another person's seat.

Go back more than 230 years.

At noon on December 23, 1783, the Maryland State House in Annapolis was crowded too.

The man entering that chamber also commanded an army. George Washington had just led the Continental Army to victory in the War of Independence. Only two aides accompanied him.

The delegates to Congress sat at the front. Spectators filled the upstairs gallery and whatever standing room remained below. Washington took the chair placed for him opposite the president of Congress. At the president's signal, he stood.

Washington bowed to Congress. The delegates removed their hats in acknowledgment, but did not bow to him.

Then he began his address.

Eight and a half years earlier, the Continental Congress had entrusted him with the Continental Army. Now the British had evacuated New York and the war was over. Washington said that he had completed the work assigned to him and was returning his commission to Congress. As he went on, his voice trembled. Witnesses saw delegates and spectators weep. When the address was over, he drew his commission from his coat and handed it to Thomas Mifflin, president of Congress. He left Annapolis and headed home to Mount Vernon for Christmas.²

Two chairs, more than 230 years apart.

A president entered a legislature with armed personnel and sat in its presiding officer's seat. A commander in chief arrived with two aides, rose from the chair Congress had provided, and returned military authority to a civilian body.

Why did one believe he could sit down, while the other believed he had to stand up?

The Nobel Prize Measured the Beams and Columns

In 2024, the Nobel Prize in economics went to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. For years, the three economists had studied a common question: Why do some countries prosper while others remain poor?

Their answer can be condensed into one word: institutions.

Whether property is secure, whether ordinary people can enter markets, and whether power is constrained all affect people's willingness to invest, innovate, and cooperate over time. Inclusive political and economic institutions bring more people into the process and protect the gains from their efforts. Extractive institutions concentrate opportunities and rewards in a few hands.³

That is an important answer. Without courts, legislatures, contracts, and predictable rules, even the finest morals will not automatically get a supplier's invoices paid. Under different rules, the same effort leads to different outcomes.

According to this explanation, the difference between the two chairs seems straightforward: different institutions.

But the matter is not settled quite so quickly.

The assembly Bukele entered did have constitutional protection. El Salvador's 1983 constitution also established a presidential republic. A president, a legislature, courts, the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers—all the familiar beams and columns appeared on the institutional blueprint.

Its restriction on consecutive presidential terms was even stricter than America's. The United States allows a president to serve consecutive terms. The Salvadoran constitution applicable in 2020 prohibited immediate reelection after a five-year term. Article 154 was explicit: when the term ended, the president could not remain in office for a single additional day.⁴

The paper had already told him when he must stand up.

Before that time arrived, he sat in the chair of another branch of government.

Separation of powers and term limits both restrict an officeholder's possession of public office. When Washington surrendered his command, the future US Constitution had not even been written. Congress in Annapolis lacked money, could not levy taxes on its own, and had long failed to pay the soldiers what it had promised them.

One legislature, protected by a formal constitution, saw armed men standing among its members' seats. Another, too weak even to pay its troops, received its commander in chief's commission back.

Institutional economics has a ready answer: a written constitution is not the same thing as institutions in practice. Powers may be separated on paper, yet the system may still be extractive in practice. And behind the cash-strapped Congress stood more than a century of colonial assemblies and the common-law tradition.

As a builder, I want to follow that answer one step further. When a constitution obstructs the most powerful person in the room, what makes it continue to count at that moment?

Constraining power, protecting property, widening participation—these institutions are load-bearing beams and columns. They are not decorations. Following them downward, an engineer must still inspect their connections. When the load really comes, through which joint does the force reach the ground?

The provisions are on paper. Power has offices, budgets, police, and guns.

Once armed men have entered the chamber, who enforces the institutions that are supposed to enforce the rules?

The First Chair: One Second to Sit Down

Bukele wanted the assembly to approve a loan of approximately $109 million for a security program. El Salvador had long suffered from crime and gangs. The need for security was real.

The assembly had not approved his request.

The legislators might have misjudged the situation. They might have delayed a necessary program. The sixty-second test does not pronounce the person saying no correct. It asks whether a president, even with a sound proposal, may use guns to override the legislature's authority.

The first chair tests the boundary after “I disagree.” The second tests the responsibility after “I gave my word.”

If public power is property, a legislature's refusal is a subordinate's insult to the owner. The soldiers have merely come to open the owner's door. If public power is a trust—something held on behalf of others—the legislature's refusal is part of the boundary that limits the president's authority. The president may criticize, lobby, submit a revised proposal, or let voters judge at the next election. He cannot pocket another branch's authority simply because he commands armed force.

Prayer did not alter that boundary.

A man may speak of God while sitting in someone else's chair. The question is not whether he mentions God. It is whether he acknowledges a standard above himself that applies to him as well.

Bukele invoked prayer to explain his patience. It did not give him the right to occupy that seat. Piety cannot take the place of procedure, any more than a prayer at the start of construction can waive the structural inspection.

The Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court subsequently ordered the president not to use the armed forces for purposes contrary to the constitution or in ways that endangered republican democracy and the separation of powers. The institutions responded. The court drew a boundary. The next question was whether that boundary could make the man commanding armed force stop.

He did not dissolve the assembly that day or permanently occupy its presiding officer's seat. But when the assembly refused him, he brought in the army.

A crack shows where the force is traveling.

On May 1, 2021, a new legislature took office. The president's party now held an outright majority. On its first day, the assembly voted to remove all five judges of the Constitutional Chamber and the attorney general. That September, the newly constituted chamber ruled that the president could seek immediate reelection. In February 2024, Bukele won another term by an overwhelming margin.⁵

The judges had been replaced. The reelection restriction had been reinterpreted. Boundaries were no longer only crossed with armed force. Now they were also being rewritten within the forms of law.

It takes one second to sit down.

That second reveals what an officeholder does when another authority obstructs him. Does he keep trying to persuade it, or step over it?

The Second Chair: Before He Stood Up

Before Washington stood in Annapolis, the army had already pushed another chair within his reach.

In March 1783, with the war nearing its end, officers stationed at Newburgh, New York, were increasingly angry. They had gone years without their full pay. The benefits the Continental Congress had promised were uncertain. When the country needed them to fight, it had asked for patience. With victory approaching, they feared the country meant to treat that patience as something it would never have to pay for.

Anonymous letters circulated among the officers, urging them to meet and suggesting they use the force at their command to compel the civilian government to keep its promises.⁶

The government really did owe them money. It was Congress that had first let “I gave my word” lose its weight.

This is precisely when power can most easily acquire a new name. An army can call debt collection national salvation and turn a grievance into authorization. A general can convert his soldiers' anger into a claim to rule.

Washington did not deny that the army's pay was overdue, nor did he denounce the officers' anger as disloyalty. He opposed something else: replacing civilian government with the force of the army.

He came to the officers' meeting and urged them against an action that would destroy the freedom they had just won. His address did not immediately change the mood. Then he took out a letter from a delegate to the Continental Congress and reached for his spectacles. Many of the officers had never seen him wear them. He asked their indulgence: in serving his country, he had not only grown gray but nearly blind.

The balance in the room shifted. Before them stood more than a man asking them, on Congress's behalf, to wait again. He was their commander in chief, who had paid the price alongside them. Some wept. A gathering that could have become an act of military coercion instead backed Washington's appeal to Congress.

The money owed to the army still had to be pursued. The guns in the soldiers' hands could not give them title to the country.

Congress subsequently agreed to substitute five years of full pay for the lifetime half-pay it had originally promised.⁷ Payment took years, and at one point the certificates issued as payment lost much of their value. Acknowledging the debt did not erase the cost of delay or substitute for payment. With the promise on record, the government still had to answer how and when it would pay. The soldiers' decision not to seize power did not mean the government had fulfilled its obligations.

Nine months later, Washington returned his commission at Annapolis. This was no sudden grand gesture. It was the final step in a course he had already chosen. The army had not become a government for collecting its own debts. Its general had not become the country's owner.

A commission does not climb out of a general's coat on its own.

Before Restraints Became Walls

Washington faced real constraints too.

The thirteen states would not automatically accept military rule. The officer corps was not united. An army without money could scarcely govern a vast new country for long. Local politics, republican traditions, and public reputation all raised the cost of seizing power. Returning the commission would also earn him the distinction of having surrendered power voluntarily. For someone who cared how posterity would judge him, restraint could be an investment in reputation.

He later returned to public life, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and served two terms as president. But those roles required fresh authorization. Victory in war could not issue it in advance.

Institutions matter precisely because they make overreach costly and organize resistance, so a country need not wait for a saint every time.

Those constraints did not make overreach impossible. Reputation can reward restraint, but it can also reward another story: extraordinary times require an extraordinary leader; the handover can wait until the country is truly safe.

There is always a noble way to explain why one should remain in possession.

Washington had constraints, and he had choices. What needs explaining is why he treated those constraints as a wall before they had become hard enough to be one.

Paper cannot subdue a general. Rules have to be carried out by real people. At the most expensive moment, does the holder of power accept restraint? If he refuses, can others invoke that restraint and make him stop?

The Nobel research tells us which beams and columns do a better job of constraining power.

The two chairs bring us to the joint: Why can't the person in charge declare those beams and columns to be his furniture?

The Key Is Not the Deed

I work in construction. When an owner gives a project manager the keys to the site, a budget, and authority to direct the work, he is not giving him the building.

The manager can enter many rooms and direct many people. Opening a door does not make the room his. Giving orders does not make the workers his property. Authority comes with a task and is bounded by the drawings, scope, inspections, and schedule. When the work is done, the keys go back.

So it is with public power.

Whoever holds power in trust cannot give himself authority simply because he wants it. That power exists for particular duties, with a scope and duration governed by shared rules. When the authorization ends, the power must be returned. What its holder did in office remains open to examination.

This is the first principle illuminated by both chairs:

Public power is a trust, not property. Victory hands you the key, not the deed.

Why do institutions affect prosperity? They matter not only because they establish who may do what today, but also because long-term cooperation requires a wager on tomorrow. A bridge, a laboratory, or a new technology may be approved by one administration, inspected by the next, and finally paid for by a third.

If every transfer of power can rewrite yesterday's promises, banks will demand more collateral, suppliers will demand larger advances, and businesses will divert research money into cultivating connections. No collective moral collapse is necessary. Each person need only grow more cautious, and the whole society will pay the cost of protecting itself.

When cooperation depends on strangers and must survive repeated transfers of power, public commitments cannot start over with each new officeholder. As old promises continue to be honored, those who come later can place their trust in others on the strength of that record. When earned trust survives in this way, people become more willing to invest their money and time in the future.

Institutions keep that trust from depending entirely on one person's character. Yet for institutions to survive the most expensive moments, someone must acknowledge that he is not their owner.

The beams and columns matter.

But they cannot hang in the air. A building with every beam and column in place, yet nothing beneath to carry their load, has no roots. Until the earthquake comes, it looks like any other building.

From the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to 2026, the United States has traveled 250 years. Many people have occupied the president's chair. The throne has remained empty: the republic has not installed another king.

Another republic, also equipped on paper with separated powers and term limits, saw its president enter the legislature with troops in 2020 and sit where he had no right to sit. The written provisions had not disappeared. The boundary had already been crossed.

You can copy provisions and the names of institutions. But copying cannot produce an officeholder who, when he is blocked, still acknowledges that he has no right to overstep. Nor can it supply the strength that lets others, on that basis, make him stop.

Columns can be copied. Roots cannot.

The Commission Returns to the Table

Return to December 23, 1783.

Washington takes out his commission and places it in the hands of the president of Congress. That piece of paper once empowered a man to move armies, appoint officers, and make decisions of life and death in war. Now the same paper leaves his hands.

Congress did not wrest military authority from him.

He gave it back.

In his resignation address, he entrusted the country's interests to “the protection of Almighty God.”² Both men spoke of God. One sat down. The other stood up. Mentioning God is not enough. We must ask whether the standard a man acknowledges applies to him as well.

Washington held military power but acknowledged that it was not his property.

Bukele's act of sitting down sent a message: If I have the strength to cross the boundary, I may use this position.

Washington's act of standing up sent a message: Even if I have the strength to keep possession, this authority is not my property.

One occupied.

The other returned.

The two chairs expose the deepest property line within institutions: the holder of public power is its user, not its owner.

A country is not a house awarded to the election winner.

Public officials receive only the keys.

But if public power is a trust, to whom is it ultimately answerable? The people, legislatures, and laws can all confer authority. They can all be wrong. When the law on the page itself crosses a boundary, is there a higher standard that can call a halt to it?

That question remains when the chair becomes a seat on the United States Supreme Court.

No soldiers enter this courtroom. A judgment will be formally written in the language of the law.

What it will decide is whether a human being can be deleted from “all.”