It took George W. Bush only a few days after the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount and made him president in 2000 to sum up the essential challenge of being in charge of a democratic government: People have a pesky habit of questioning orders.

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier,” Bush said on Dec. 18, 2000, after Democrats in Congress told him they expected at least some effort at compromise. “Just so long,” he added, “as I am the dictator.”

Bush was not entirely joking, as the country later discovered when he began ordering things like warrantless wiretapping, illegal detentions, torture and the invasion of Iraq — and seeking to silence or get rid of anyone who stood in his way.

In March 2004, the Bush White House tried to compel a hospitalized and barely conscious Attorney General John Ashcroft to overrule his own lawyers and declare the Bush wiretapping program legal. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush team packed the Justice Department with ideologues who were willing to invent justifications for the use of torture. And in December 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired seven United States attorneys who refused to block investigations of Republican officeholders or prosecute phony voter fraud cases.