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American friends, you might not like to hear this coming from a Russian, but your Founding Fathers did not trust you at all. Don’t feel bad, because that most remarkable constellation of 18th-century intellect and courage didn’t trust anyone.

The first modern democratic republic was founded on this healthy distrust of human nature, which led the Founders to construct a web of checks and balances to create the first nation of laws, not of men. The Founders were so skeptical because what they were attempting had no precedent. They prepared for the worst because they saw it all over the world: a world ruled by monarchs and dictators and warlords.

The authors of the Constitution fretted about a democracy that might slide into mob rule, or a President who might fashion himself emperor. They worried that too much political influence could accrue to small groups with extreme positions, and that a largely uneducated populace could be easily swayed by a demagogue who preyed on voters’ basest instincts and self-interest.

They were concerned that elected officials might exploit their powers of office to seek private gain instead of the public good. You might say that the Founding Fathers saw Donald Trump coming, 229 years in advance — although if they had also foreseen Twitter, they might have reconsidered a few things.

The safeguards the Founders built into the U.S. Constitution have held up remarkably well not by being rigid, but by being able to adapt and improve.

The Founders did not trust even themselves and had no pretensions of infallibility. A nation of laws it is, but the system has also allowed for the greatness of individuals to manifest, for the right man at the right time to lead the nation, even the world, through times of great change or trouble.

Abraham Lincoln is the most obvious example, although, focusing on foreign policy alone, I wonder how different the world would look today had individuals of weaker character been in the Oval Office instead of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.

This elasticity also means it’s possible for the wrong man at the wrong time to do significant damage if the checks decline to check and the balance becomes unbalanced. It has been 44 years since the test of Richard Nixon, and the American system has become loose and lax from a generation of partisan pushing and pulling.

Every abuse by one party is in turn embraced and expanded on by the other, and so on in a vicious downward spiral. As the institutions weakened, the people’s faith in them — and the belief in the principles underlying them — have weakened as well.

Perhaps the most visible evidence of this decay is in foreign policy, where it is now generally accepted that the President has nearly complete autonomy to direct diplomacy and war, although this is far from what the Founders planned.

“Only Congress can declare war” has become little more than an oft-cited anachronism. While literally true, U.S. Presidents from both parties have lobbed hundreds of cruise missiles and expanded military action with special forces, drones and covert operations that are barely overseen by Congress, let alone authorized.

The Senate is also required to approve treaties with other nations, but President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was just the latest example of how easy it is for the executive to sidestep such constraints. Instead of an open debate on agreement’s merits, we got constitutional jousting, executive waivers, lawsuits and hasty lawmaking that shouldn’t please anyone on either side.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but compromises on principle are the streetlights.

And what do you do if the executive simply refuses to nominate people for key positions? The Trump White House has left hundreds of positions vacant, gutting the State Department in particular. The bloated bureaucracies in D.C. could use some trimming, but not having U.S. ambassadors in hotspots like Egypt, Turkey and South Korea isn’t a sane way to do it.

While much work is simply left undone, undelegated power accrues upward, to the Oval Office, which is right where Trump wants it, free of oversight and public scrutiny. This has left the least-prepared, most unstable individual in the history of the presidency to conduct foreign policy by Twitter.

The charades and parades taking place between the Koreas right now is a perfect example. The photo ops and proclamations are hollow at best, and at worst they risk empowering and prolonging the life of the North Korean concentration camp nation for years.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons make this a far deadlier version of the game that Obama played as well, making grand peacemaker statements about Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria that have cost lives, not saved them.

It was wrong of Obama and it’s wrong of Trump, much as Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was as much of a mockery as South Korean President Moon Jae-in saying that Trump now deserves one.

For what? Perhaps they can make the statuette out of North Korean uranium, because that’s the only way Kim Jong Un is going to give any up.

“If my guy does it, it’s fine. If your guy does it, it’s not” is a recipe for disaster that was prepared and cooked to perfection with Trump’s election.

Previous Presidents bent the letter of the law to advantage, but there was rarely a sense that doing so was itself the point. Trump’s administration has gone to combative new extremes while ignoring or subverting congressional and court decisions on everything from implementing sanctions against Russia to banning immigrants from specific countries.

“Can Trump really do that?” is often asked by Americans who never realized how much of their government’s op-