DONALD TRUMP MARCHES FORCEFULLY BACKWARD

When our Founders did their founding in that famous Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia back in 1787, they thought that in the new government they were creating the House and the Senate would really have the power. They would decide things. The President would be the ceremonial leader of the country but he would also be a kind of glorified clerk who “would see that the laws were faithfully executed”. They did assume that in war time the president would direct the military but he would not be able to go to war at all unless the Congress allowed him to do so.

The story of our history since then has been the gradual erosion of that congressional power. Presidents had to make decisions when the Congress was not there at all (in the early days, sessions were short and the summer hot). It was always, with the best will in the world, difficult to get large numbers of men from different regions with differing interests to agree on anything. It was always easier to assign functions to the president and to let him decide.

The great lurch away from the original system came with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in the 1930’s. Washington D.C. moved from being a sleepy southern town to an absolute beehive of activity as thousands of young men and women moved to Washington to provide manpower and clerical help in the administering of the huge new national programs. With the creation of those giant programs the presidency became forever enlarged.

What has happened since then is that government programs and government regulation of the economy has proliferated, modernized and enlarged. To handle all those programs a large bureaucracy has grown up around the White House. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson just had a few clerks that they hired and paid for themselves. No more! The White House Executive Office employs something on the order of six hundred people.

So, presidents with the advice and the consent of Congress have accumulated functions and have become ever more powerful. The truth is that most people, even in Washington, barely noticed till now how powerful, for good or ill, that presidents had become. The programs and the regulatory authority were added gradually. Presidents, creatures of their political parties, felt that they would be judged based on how well run and how successful the programs were. Presidents, with the possible exception of genial, innocuous appearing Ronald Reagan, did not try to use their power to weaken or to destroy programs already in place.

Programs, once in place, tend to be continued. They build up a constituency of both those who benefit and those who administer the programs. It was easier just to let the programs continue. And, so long as regulations could be justified because they serve the greater good, it was difficult to remove them. Presidents and their staffs, constantly overwhelmed by new challenges, tended to leave things already done alone. Presidents also recognized the political damage to themselves and their party by taking protections away from people already written into law.

The Founders, in 1787, were terribly concerned about possible problems with future presidents (the fact that George III, with whom they had fought a war to separate, then became insane could not have been very reassuring). New Yorker Aaron Burr was one of the elite founding group. He was clearly brilliant and lived in a grand style. But, others in the leadership were leery of Burr. They all knew that there was something wrong with him (“his eyes burned like black coal”). In retrospect he certainly seems to have been psychopathic. When he tied the electoral vote with Thomas Jefferson in 1800 (he was intended to be Vice-President) and decided to go for the presidency himself, the leadership went to an extraordinary effort to defeat him. Burr later gained his revenge by killing his political enemy Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel.

Whatever we can say about Donald Trump, he is not “normal”, in that he seems to care little for anything beyond himself. He is certainly not a normal politician. He ran as a Republican (he joined the party in order to run), but it is clear that he feels little emotional connection to the party he leads. Politicians try to enlarge their base and increase the number of their party’s voters. Donald Trump attacks everyone. He loves to hold raucous rallies with his adoring supporters, many of whom are not Republicans, but he shows no need to appeal to anyone else. Clearly traditional Republican actives have no clue about how to control him or to stop his embarrassing tweeting. He famously reads almost nothing and seems to feel no need to know very much about the government he leads.

But, he does have power! Donald Trump knows almost nothing about the intricacies of legislation or how to get bills passed, so he is unlikely to push through anything new. He seems to care little for the future of the Republican Party or for the welfare of ordinary citizens including the people who attend his rallies. The only thing left for him is to undo what previous presidents have done, most particularly his nemesis, Barack Obama. What is left is a kind of negative power that presidents before him may have never really thought about. He can destroy things (there is scheduled a huge roll back of environmental protections just this week). And, that is what he is doing.

So, he has a kind of negative power that has been accumulating all those years as more and more functions were left up to the presidents. It is an enormous challenge to the system that the founders created over two hundred years ago. They could solve the Aaron Burr problem because under unique circumstances the leadership could still intervene. They assumed that with the House and the Senate so powerful that they could exercise some control over a flawed future president.

During the long period since 1787 there have developed changes in the way the government’s structure actually functions. The Founders assumed that the House and the Senate would dominate the government. They certainly would attempt to act as a check if the President tried to move beyond his constitutional limits. Today many Republican members of Congress really think of themselves as a part of the “President’s team”. They have come to be dependent on the President’s leadership. So, if the President’s behavior in office is challenged their first reaction is not to intervene but to fight to defend him.

Donald Trump is a unique test. Contrary to what some say, we do not face a long series of Donald Trumps. There is no one else like him. No one who combines wealth, ignorance, anger, and energy in the same way. There may be, for the voters, a kind of historic lesson here. Totally unprepared presidents are a danger! They may do great harm. The voters do learn! If they move on to “hire” presidents who are really experienced and capable then the Founders would be pleased. The system that they created so long ago will be allowed to continue.

H.J. Rishel

8/21/2018