In all my extra free time locked away at home, I finished reading Madison's journals on the convention, and many of the debates in the first congress. Makes me furious. They knew then, and blatantly expressed, that the real enemy was power, corruption, money, control. They hoped that "checks and balances" would put some teeth into the document to allow general good nature to check the bad apples (there is some Britishicon example here of Cromwell executing the authors of the first British constitution?). I don't think they imagined that a bueracracy itself would be so corrupt as to usurp their checks and balances.
Policy isn't law. But our bureaucracy seems to have no problem treating policy from unelected dept. heads as the same as law. The "check and balance" here isn't supposed to be the courts, which refuse to hear the case many times anyway, but the legislature. Pass a law if you want me to follow your rules....edicts from some unelected basement official aren't laws. The only bodies that can roll back executive authority are legislative. They, after all, gave the executive bureaucracy all of its extra "emergency" powers to begin with.
There are some pretty great things that Madison recorded...quotes from Washington who was president of the convention and the like - makes me laugh and cry at the same time on almost every paragraph.