I’m all for this, but how about some perspective? Trump may be the worst, and I suspect he is, but how about an actual *Executive* watch that provides a catalog of the abuses of power by the many modern presidents who have, well, abused their power? Instead of making this about a man, how about making it a useful compendium about what has become of the office? From Watergate to Whitewater to WMDs to drone killings to crony capitalism to family corruption and hidden dementia, there’s a lot to go around. And a large part of it lies at the feet of the people and their legislature; that, it seems to me, is the lesson here, not “ohmygodTrumpdidevenmorebadstuff!”
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but corrupted power adores one.
I agree the emergence of the monarchial/imperial presidency has taken time, many hands, has been bipartisan, and Trump is just the culmination. BUT only Trump matters right now. And as far as I can tell anything else would just be another exercise in "Bothsiderism" which already takes up too much space in our civil discourse.
What you say here about the past has been covered by various writers and scholars since Arthur Schlesinger, seminal work "The Imperial Presidency" in 1973. There are also popular analyses of each Presidency cataloguing the corruption and abuses of power of every President from Washington forward.
My own personal take on all this is that we are now living in a Post-Constitutional period and so it no longer matters how or what bad things Trump does because there are no Courts that he can't defy because the power of impeachment has been nullified by Congress. Congress is unwilling and probably unable to assert itself. It is unlikely that there will be truly free and fair elections so this will probably remain the case for many years.
The proper "perspective" is that Trump's efforts to mow down all intuitional restraints on his power are unprecedented in their scope and speed, and extraordinarily dangerous for the future. Dwelling on the history of lesser abuses of power is not very helpful in meeting the needs of the moment.
No previous president has been as psychopathically amoral as Trump. None has routinely praised despots who "rule with an iron fist,' as he does. Nixon did say, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal," but Trump has more aggressively asserted and acted on a doctrine of unlimited power. He has been emboldened by the egregious immunity ruling, by the toxic cult of personality that formed around him, and by the Christiam nationalist reactionaries and the technomarchists who have soured on constitutional democracy and want an autocrat to impose their ideological vision on America.
Also unprecedented is how Trump has reoriented our foreign policy away from the realm of liberal democracies to align with predatory autocracy. That's another indication of his aim to turn America into an autocracy where Dear Leader does whatever he wants and wields all the power of the state to punish his personal enemies and enrich himself and his favored oligarchs.
Donald Trump - along with his close allies - is a unique peril, not just another chapter in a history of presidents pushing at the boundaries of their lawful power.
I’m replying to my original comments but responding to both Harley & Carol. These are thoughtful comments and, though I don’t agree with them entirely, I appreciate them.
“Post-Constitutional”? What would you call the Civil War, and all the unconstitutionality exercised by Lincoln? Many people thought the same about FDR, Nixon. The word “crisis” was bandied about ad nauseam. So far, I see nothing out of the ordinary other than Trump’s style and blistering pace (which admittedly has a blitzkrieg quality, but not fast enough to stop the lawsuits). Courts are open, SS payments are still being deposited, student loans still being processed, Medicare claims still being adjudicated, tax returns accepted (all this from personal experience).
We’ve got a constitutional ignoramus, a crony capitalist, an economic idiot, and a foreign policy loose cannon in the Oval Office. That’s neither news nor new.
We’ve had plenty of POTUSs who attempted to shred bits of the Constitution, some successfully. In the meantime, we’ve got lots of cases in the courts already, and as near as I can tell, they are all going according to Hoyle.
No more free and fair elections? There is zero evidence of that. It’s that kind of hyperbole that gets us nowhere except wrapped around Trump’s axle.
I am well aware of “The Imperial Presidency,” which I’ve read twice, and many other scholarly works along those lines. I studied plenty of con law in undergrad and law school. And I’ve lived through every president I can remember starting with Kennedy. All have acted egregiously at some point or another—except perhaps for Carter, whose failings were generally smaller scale—though none quite like Trump.
Unique peril? How? What has he done or might do that terribly threatens our framework? What has he done to defy courts worse than Andrew Jackson? Has he threatened to pack the Court like FDR? Has he promised to circumvent the Court the way that Biden tried with student loan forgiveness? (BTW, I fully expect him to, but it hasn’t happened yet, and how will it be different?)
“Needs of the moment”? What might those be, and how does the Executive Watch compendium serve them?
I’m an bit amazed how little faith some have in the strength of this republic’s framework that has survived much worse than Trump. You’d think he was the Mule from Asimov’s Foundation trilogy upsetting the entire course of human history. He’s not. America as a republic is tougher than you credit her.
But I digress. My original comment, which started with “I’m all for this,” but suggested it be made historically more useful, and prospectively more instructive—was about that: let’s make this information useful. That’s not “both-sides-ism,” a weak response to my suggestion. But, if this is just a “nanner nanner, I told you so” extended neon sign proving that Trump really is just as bad as Never-Trumpers like Bob said he would be—which hardly required a crystal ball as Trump openly promised precisely what he is doing—fine, but it will be of limited use. And we’ve already got the WaPo, which daily predicts the end of the world as we know it, and legions of hair-on-fire hysterics acting as if it has.
I like where David Friedman seems to be landing here:
“Parts of what Trump is doing I very much approve of. I believe it would be a better country, a better educated country, if the federal role in education were entirely eliminated. I suspect that scientific progress would be faster if the government played no role in either funding or regulating it. Some of what the EPA does is probably worth doing but much of it is not. Climate policy is, in my view, an expensive mistake based on badly biased science. I have long believed that both the US and the world would be better off if the US had a less interventionist foreign policy, if our allies took chief responsibility for their own defense.
“Other parts of what Trump is doing I very much disapprove of. I expect his tariff policy to make both the US and its trading partners poorer. I expect increased restrictions on legal immigration to make both present inhabitants of the US and would-be immigrants worse off. Limiting the ability of immigrants, legal and illegal, to benefit by welfare state features of the present system would be a good thing but expelling present illegal immigrants would, in my view, make both them and us worse off. As best I can tell, support for that policy is driven by an exaggerated, in part fictional, account of the problems they cause.”
The discussions in the comics are often better than the articles.
Thank you for your balanced perspective. I keep saying that if the Left wants to become "great" again, they're going to need to be accountable for their own sins and abuses of power, of which there are MANY.
Many presidents from both sides of the aisle have abused their power.
But just attacking Trump obsessively is like a having an annoying, droning sound that you eventually want to go away. It's meaningless and just annoys everyone.
I am also extremely tired of hearing how Trump is Hitler/the devil/democracy's end/etc. without providing any solutions. I want to hear how we can fight the whole phenomenon, and keep the rotten bastards on the other side from piling on once they get into office. How about some workable ideas to reduce presidential power?
I’m all for this, but how about some perspective? Trump may be the worst, and I suspect he is, but how about an actual *Executive* watch that provides a catalog of the abuses of power by the many modern presidents who have, well, abused their power? Instead of making this about a man, how about making it a useful compendium about what has become of the office? From Watergate to Whitewater to WMDs to drone killings to crony capitalism to family corruption and hidden dementia, there’s a lot to go around. And a large part of it lies at the feet of the people and their legislature; that, it seems to me, is the lesson here, not “ohmygodTrumpdidevenmorebadstuff!”
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but corrupted power adores one.
I agree the emergence of the monarchial/imperial presidency has taken time, many hands, has been bipartisan, and Trump is just the culmination. BUT only Trump matters right now. And as far as I can tell anything else would just be another exercise in "Bothsiderism" which already takes up too much space in our civil discourse.
What you say here about the past has been covered by various writers and scholars since Arthur Schlesinger, seminal work "The Imperial Presidency" in 1973. There are also popular analyses of each Presidency cataloguing the corruption and abuses of power of every President from Washington forward.
My own personal take on all this is that we are now living in a Post-Constitutional period and so it no longer matters how or what bad things Trump does because there are no Courts that he can't defy because the power of impeachment has been nullified by Congress. Congress is unwilling and probably unable to assert itself. It is unlikely that there will be truly free and fair elections so this will probably remain the case for many years.
The proper "perspective" is that Trump's efforts to mow down all intuitional restraints on his power are unprecedented in their scope and speed, and extraordinarily dangerous for the future. Dwelling on the history of lesser abuses of power is not very helpful in meeting the needs of the moment.
No previous president has been as psychopathically amoral as Trump. None has routinely praised despots who "rule with an iron fist,' as he does. Nixon did say, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal," but Trump has more aggressively asserted and acted on a doctrine of unlimited power. He has been emboldened by the egregious immunity ruling, by the toxic cult of personality that formed around him, and by the Christiam nationalist reactionaries and the technomarchists who have soured on constitutional democracy and want an autocrat to impose their ideological vision on America.
Also unprecedented is how Trump has reoriented our foreign policy away from the realm of liberal democracies to align with predatory autocracy. That's another indication of his aim to turn America into an autocracy where Dear Leader does whatever he wants and wields all the power of the state to punish his personal enemies and enrich himself and his favored oligarchs.
Donald Trump - along with his close allies - is a unique peril, not just another chapter in a history of presidents pushing at the boundaries of their lawful power.
I’m replying to my original comments but responding to both Harley & Carol. These are thoughtful comments and, though I don’t agree with them entirely, I appreciate them.
“Post-Constitutional”? What would you call the Civil War, and all the unconstitutionality exercised by Lincoln? Many people thought the same about FDR, Nixon. The word “crisis” was bandied about ad nauseam. So far, I see nothing out of the ordinary other than Trump’s style and blistering pace (which admittedly has a blitzkrieg quality, but not fast enough to stop the lawsuits). Courts are open, SS payments are still being deposited, student loans still being processed, Medicare claims still being adjudicated, tax returns accepted (all this from personal experience).
We’ve got a constitutional ignoramus, a crony capitalist, an economic idiot, and a foreign policy loose cannon in the Oval Office. That’s neither news nor new.
We’ve had plenty of POTUSs who attempted to shred bits of the Constitution, some successfully. In the meantime, we’ve got lots of cases in the courts already, and as near as I can tell, they are all going according to Hoyle.
No more free and fair elections? There is zero evidence of that. It’s that kind of hyperbole that gets us nowhere except wrapped around Trump’s axle.
I am well aware of “The Imperial Presidency,” which I’ve read twice, and many other scholarly works along those lines. I studied plenty of con law in undergrad and law school. And I’ve lived through every president I can remember starting with Kennedy. All have acted egregiously at some point or another—except perhaps for Carter, whose failings were generally smaller scale—though none quite like Trump.
Unique peril? How? What has he done or might do that terribly threatens our framework? What has he done to defy courts worse than Andrew Jackson? Has he threatened to pack the Court like FDR? Has he promised to circumvent the Court the way that Biden tried with student loan forgiveness? (BTW, I fully expect him to, but it hasn’t happened yet, and how will it be different?)
“Needs of the moment”? What might those be, and how does the Executive Watch compendium serve them?
I’m an bit amazed how little faith some have in the strength of this republic’s framework that has survived much worse than Trump. You’d think he was the Mule from Asimov’s Foundation trilogy upsetting the entire course of human history. He’s not. America as a republic is tougher than you credit her.
But I digress. My original comment, which started with “I’m all for this,” but suggested it be made historically more useful, and prospectively more instructive—was about that: let’s make this information useful. That’s not “both-sides-ism,” a weak response to my suggestion. But, if this is just a “nanner nanner, I told you so” extended neon sign proving that Trump really is just as bad as Never-Trumpers like Bob said he would be—which hardly required a crystal ball as Trump openly promised precisely what he is doing—fine, but it will be of limited use. And we’ve already got the WaPo, which daily predicts the end of the world as we know it, and legions of hair-on-fire hysterics acting as if it has.
I like where David Friedman seems to be landing here:
“Parts of what Trump is doing I very much approve of. I believe it would be a better country, a better educated country, if the federal role in education were entirely eliminated. I suspect that scientific progress would be faster if the government played no role in either funding or regulating it. Some of what the EPA does is probably worth doing but much of it is not. Climate policy is, in my view, an expensive mistake based on badly biased science. I have long believed that both the US and the world would be better off if the US had a less interventionist foreign policy, if our allies took chief responsibility for their own defense.
“Other parts of what Trump is doing I very much disapprove of. I expect his tariff policy to make both the US and its trading partners poorer. I expect increased restrictions on legal immigration to make both present inhabitants of the US and would-be immigrants worse off. Limiting the ability of immigrants, legal and illegal, to benefit by welfare state features of the present system would be a good thing but expelling present illegal immigrants would, in my view, make both them and us worse off. As best I can tell, support for that policy is driven by an exaggerated, in part fictional, account of the problems they cause.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/daviddfriedman/p/interesting-times
The discussions in the comics are often better than the articles.
Thank you for your balanced perspective. I keep saying that if the Left wants to become "great" again, they're going to need to be accountable for their own sins and abuses of power, of which there are MANY.
Many presidents from both sides of the aisle have abused their power.
But just attacking Trump obsessively is like a having an annoying, droning sound that you eventually want to go away. It's meaningless and just annoys everyone.
I am also extremely tired of hearing how Trump is Hitler/the devil/democracy's end/etc. without providing any solutions. I want to hear how we can fight the whole phenomenon, and keep the rotten bastards on the other side from piling on once they get into office. How about some workable ideas to reduce presidential power?