For Thomas Friedman the key question the Republican candidates need to be made to answer is whether they’d support a 5-cents hike to the federal gasoline tax. Sigh.

For me, it’s “Will you promise to refrain from any executive legislating, that is, the kind of action that President Obama utilized when he altered the health care law twice, or when he issued a massive executive amnesty for illegal immigrants, effectively altering existing law on his own, but using the excuse of discretionary enforcement?”

Well, it’s more a slightly more complicated question than one about a gas tax, but to tweak a famous line from All the President’s Men, it’s only the separation of powers that’s at stake if our journalistic class screws it up. I.e., “screws it up” by failing to pose this question to all the candidates of both parties. As the liberal commentator Dylan Matthews put it back in March, when he was thinking about the implications of future presidents imitating Obama’s example of executive legislating:

I’d guess that the Congress of 2050 will largely serve to ratify decisions the president made unilaterally. My prediction is that this process will continue apace until the presidency’s powers are so immense as to be no longer recognizable. Norms that render dramatic actions impossible today will erode. Right now, it’d cause an uproar if a Republican president issued a blanket pardon for tax offenders who paid only what they’d owe if his tax plan had taken effect. But as changing tax policy through Congress becomes harder, that norm will weaken and an executive action like that will become plausible.

Of course, a simpler way of asking the question is this: “Was Saturday Night Live right about what the president did, and do you promise not to do anything similar?”

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Anyhow, what question do you want the Republican candidates to be asked?