Authors should not be criticized for not writing a book they didn’t write.

But their judgment can be questioned by choosing to write about fleas while ignoring elephants in the living room.

Such is the case when it comes to journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’ “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” which provides a ringside seat to the egotistical, megalomaniacal calculations and maneuvers of the candidates and supporting actors in the 2024 presidential campaign. There are no surprise O. Henry endings. All the players corroborate a truism: Politics attracts deformed personalities featuring an insatiable lust of power for the sake of power to fuel self-esteem.

Among other things, when the 2024 campaign ended, President Joe Biden and candidate Kamala Harris were estranged from former President Barack Obama. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was despised by first lady Jill Biden and was semi-alienated from Harris. Campaign staff were constantly at loggerheads vying for personal prominence and power. There were no “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” protagonists. The nimbly paced narrative, however, is devoid of intellectual content. None of the actors voice alarm that the United States Constitution is ablaze, like passengers on the Titanic competing for a first-class berth while ignoring the iceberg.

The battle for the White House has become more ruthless because constitutional powers have concentrated in the presidency by usurpation or congressional abdication while the federal government has grown like bamboo over the past century or more.

To be president is to occupy the most powerful position in the history of the world: a military spanning the globe and the skies, dragnet surveillance with dossiers on the entire population, regulatory authority to make or break any business enterprise with the stroke of a pen and an annual budget soaring past $7 trillion to employ as a weapon to assist friends and destroy enemies.

Power attracts depravity. Absolute power attracts absolute depravity. Earthbound Benjamin Franklin at the constitutional convention, drawing on his long experience mingling with the political classes of Britain, France and the United States, warned:

“There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall be at the same time a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it … It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your government, and be your rulers.”

Contrary to the Constitution’s separation of powers — a structural bill of rights to defend liberty and forestall tyranny — the president has metamorphosed since the Spanish-American War of 1898 into an extraconstitutional king.

The president has usurped the war power from Congress. The president has usurped the treaty power from the Senate by calling treaties executive agreements. Congress has surrendered its legislative power to the president, including the power of the purse, with limitless delegations and acquiescence to presidential refusals to faithfully execute the laws — indistinguishable from an unconstitutional presidential repeal of a duly enacted statute.

Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976 without defining “national emergency.” President Donald Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to throw the world economy into turmoil with stratospheric tariffs.

Other countries, including China, have predictably retaliated. We risk a reprise of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 which fueled the Great Depression.

The president operates a secret government shielded from congressional oversight under the banner of state secrets or executive privilege. Elon Musk, who has been neither elected to any office nor confirmed by the Senate to any appointed position, has turned the federal government upside-down (doing the work of Congress) with zero oversight. Members are terrified that Mr. Musk might support a primary opponent and require them to work for reelection rather than coast to victory in gerrymandered districts.

Presidents fought an undeclared war against Afghanistan for two decades costing $2.3 trillion on a fool’s errand concluding in a defeat by the Taliban.

Not a single official responsible for this stupendous misadventure paid a price, which guarantees repetition. We are witnessing the same in President Trump’s continuing gratuitous, unconstitutional presidential war against the Houthis, a war that was begun in violation of the Constitution’s Declare War Clause under President Barack Obama.

We are sleepwalking to self-ruination by abandoning the miracle at Philadelphia that gave birth to the Constitution. That is the urgent story that authors Allen and Parnes ignored. They are not alone.

Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author of “American Empire Before the Fall.” His website is www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com and X feed is @brucefeinesq.