Constitution as covenant

The balance of power written into the Constitution is a covenantal matter. It is not unlike the covenant between management and labor in the production process, or the covenant between the ruling and the ruled classes in the political process. 

The logic of the Constitution is to mediate the honoring of the covenant between ruler and ruled by the honoring of the covenant between executive and legislative, and between Federal and State. When the executive alters the covenantal boundary between ruler and ruled without first submitting the change order to the deliberations of the legislative, especially the legislators who speak most directly for the ruled, and without first clearing it with the judiciary who superintend the covenantal balance between the ruler and the ruled, then the executive is violating the Constitution, abrogating the Constitutional covenant, and committing the sin of hubris with all the dishonor that comes with it. 

When Kennedy stole the election from Nixon he did it under cover of night, with the compliment that vice pays to virtue, as it were. When Cheney/Bush stole the election they did it through the offices of SCOTUS and altered the covenantal balance between the Federal and the State prerogatives, especially as that balance relates to electoral matters.