Lemures of the Republic or, The Ghost in the Machine

The Steady State | By Steven Cash

On the eve of the Iraq War, I sat quietly as a guest—a “plus-one”, if you will—behind Senator Dianne Feinstein, who I served as her intelligence staff. We were at a closed-door gathering of the Democratic “War Group,” a subset of the Senate Democratic caucus convened to hammer out a unified response to the Bush administration’s accelerating march to war. We met just off the Senate floor, and the room carried the anticipatory charge of momentous decision.

But no real discussion ever took place.

Senator Robert Byrd, the senior-most Democratic Senator and self-styled institutional memory of the chamber had the place of honor at the head of the table. With his storied sense of purpose, he launched into a winding oration that moved from the seven hills of ancient Rome to the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. He was aging, and his voice quavered, but stayed strong and true. He brandished his well-worn pocket Constitution like a Roman lictor’s fasces and summoned the ghosts of Cicero and Cato, all while weaving an intricate exegesis of senatorial duty. It was erudite, earnest, and, in the end, terminally time-consuming. Before the meeting could move forward in any meaninful way, a vote was called on the Senate floor, and the meeting disbanded.

Shortly thereafter, the war began—with Senate assent, and with the absence of a coherent opposition.

I think often of that meeting, and of Senator Byrd, not with derision but with rueful admiration. His speech had been a lament and a warning. The Romans, he reminded us, built a republic of laws and representation: the SPQR—Senatus Populusque Romanus—“the Senate and the People of Rome.” Yet in times of crisis, they placed extraordinary powers in the hands of one man, the imperator, ostensibly a temporary war leader. Crisis after crisis—real, exaggerated, or concocted—led to repeated invocations of this emergency power. It became customary. Then expected. Then permanent.

Today, I see again the flickering specters—what the Romans called lemures—of that past. A president, once again, seeks imperium: power unchecked by Congress, justified by alarms about enemies both foreign and domestic. National peril is invoked; legal restraints are mocked or bypassed; those who investigate corruption are themselves labeled corrupt. Sound familiar? It should. This is how Republics yield to autocracy—not in thunderous collapse, but in the slow yielding of one institutional check after another.

And like Rome, the drift toward empire is greased not only by fear, but by gold. Crassus, the richest man in Rome, did not just fund politics—he became it. He bankrolled legions, brokered alliances, and bought elections. Our own gilded class—oligarchs of industry and information—are courted and protected, not regulated. A government “of the people” becomes, increasingly, a government of those who can pay to play.

Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, refused the title of king. Too crude. He preferred Princeps—First Citizen—and claimed only to hold power provisionally, for the good of the Republic. But of course, he held it for life, and with absolute authority. No future leader dared defy him, nor did the Senate meaningfully object, and they did not bother with the quaint title of Princeps – they were Emperors. They had been bypassed, their relevance ritualized, their powers hollowed out.

In that room, years ago, Senator Byrd tried to stop the erosion with words. He tried to summon history to prevent its repetition. His speech, perhaps too long, did not prevent the war. But it did, in its own way, forecast the erosion we now face.

Democracy may yet survive this moment. But only if we remember that the institutions we cherish do not fall all at once. They wither first in spirit, then in substance—and finally, they serve merely to bless the rule of a single man.

Steven Cash is the Executive Director of The Steady State. He joined the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary in 2022, and resigned on January 20, 2025. Cash began his career in local law enforcement, serving in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office prosecuting street crime and industry-wide corruption. He joined the CIA in 1994 as an assistant general counsel, focusing on the interaction between CIA and law enforcement, particularly in terrorism matters. In 1996, he transferred to CIA’s Directorate of Operations, serving as a headquarters-based operations officer. His work in operations involved counterterrorism, counterproliferation and special operations, as well as counterintelligence responsibilities. He was awarded the CIA’s Medal of Merit for his work on a sensitive project. In 2001, Cash joined the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he served as the lead counterterrorism staffer, counsel, and designee staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. He worked on post-9/11 legislation, such as the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the USA-Patriot Act, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, including the provisions which established what is now the Intelligence and Analysis office. Cash left the Senate committee in 2003 to serve as the first minority staff director for the newly established Select Committee on Homeland Security in the U.S. House of Representatives. He then served as chief of staff for the Office of Intelligence at the Department of Energy. He later returned to the Senate, where he was the chief counsel and minority staff director for the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security. In that position he worked closely with state and local law enforcement on terrorism and gang issues.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 290 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.