“He has been seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses, giving audience to the envoys of foreign potentates, in all the supercilious pomp of majesty. The images of Asiatic despotism and voluptuousness have scarcely been wanting to crown the exaggerated scene. We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janizaries, and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio.”

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That is how Alexander Hamilton, in 67 Federalist, lampooned the picture of the presidency that was being painted by critics of the Constitution. Who could have imaged that 237 years later we’d still be arguing over the powers of the American executive? Yet so, on the eve of the State of the Union message that is required by the same Constitution for which Hamilton was harping, we are, as President Obama vows to conduct his office without authority of the Congress and with the aim of implementing policies and programs it did not — and, one can deduce, would not — approve.

These stampings of the presidential foot are one of the darnedest things we’ve covered during our indenture in the editorial writing racket. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The president of America, just back from a vacation in Hawaii that cost more in nominal dollars than the entire budget of the first American administration, “raced up and down the east coast,” as USA Today put it ahead of the State of the Union. At one point he alit to announce the situation at Raleigh, North Carolina, of a new manufacturing innovation institute. At another, he named a new head of the Small Business Administration.

“You can do a lot,” Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Daniel Pfeiffer, was quoted by USA Today as having said on Fox News Sunday. Mr. Pfeiffer cited executive orders last year on “new climate change regulations” and “expanding wireless access for schools.” Mr. Pfeiffer, USA Today reported, also went on CNN’s State of the Union to announce that Mr. Obama “is not going to tell the American people that he’s going to wait for Congress.” The paper then reminded its readers that Mr. Obama’s “authority is limited.” It said his “biggest agenda items” would “require legislation from Congress, including the Republican-run House.”

That’s a downer. Hamilton writes in 70 Federalist about the importance of “energy” in the executive and the danger of “feebleness.” It strikes us that by emphasizing what he can do without reference to Congress the president is underlining the latter. For the fact remains that all the big items on his agenda — including, say, an immigration bill, a budget, a lunge for more borrowing — do require Congressional action. Even the big items already enacted — Obamacare, intelligence gathering — are awaiting review by the Supreme Court. Whether Mr. Obama is actually going to stand before Congress tomorrow and lecture them on his abilities to act where they won’t, well, this is hard to foresee. But it’s not hard to foresee that if he does, the Congress will yawn.