I’ve said this before, but not nearly so eloquently.

But he is not alone in the delusion he propounds in the first sentence of today’s killer graf. Nearly every candidate, commentator and speechifier will, at convenient times, refer to the President of the United States as “the nation’s commander-in-chief” or “our commander-in-chief.”

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”

This is a very specific delineation. When broad powers are claimed for the President, many rightly so, in his role as “commander-in-chief,” these broad powers do not automatically apply to those persons not in the armed forces of the United States. Where they exist at all, they apply to the men and women of the uniformed services of the Army and Navy, the state Guards and other armed services.

The president not only is impotent to hold me without allowing me to demand the charges against me, he is impotent to search or seize my person, goods and papers without a warrant showing probable cause. He is enjoined from quartering his armed troops on my property.

In point of fact, the president of the United States cannot do a damned thing to me that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do. And this limitation to his powers, embodied in the purposefully broad Tenth Amendment, holds because I am not a member of the armed forces.

In short, the president is not my commander-in-chief. Odds are, he is not yours, either. He is not Antonin Scalia’s commander in chief, not Hillary Clinton’s nor Chris Matthews’.

For us, the citizens of and visitors to the United States, he is the Chief Executive, pledged to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. He is not our commander. He is our servant.