In the main, there are two things that the ongoing impeachment trial of Donald John Trump bring to my mind. One is that this man is perhaps the least suited individual in America for the high office he now holds. The second is that the office of the presidency is far too powerful for a single person to hold, and that if we do not act to constrain that power, we will be in the same situation again before we know it. So in a certain respect, you can say that the Trump administration was an accident waiting to happen, made inevitable by the weak constraints on executive power, particularly in the era of U.S. global dominance following World War II (i.e. the era we remain in now).

Brother Matt took a whack at the hyper paternalistic imperial presidency back in 1991 with his song, “World War II”, the refrain to which went like this:

Daddy likes things done in a big way
Daddy's back with bargains from D-Day
Daddy chose a game for the lads to play
Daddy showed his hand with Enola Gay

We have had mad men at the helm before, to be sure. I’m thinking Nixon towards the end of his Watergate troubles, certainly, but even before, during the terror bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The crazy, drunk Nixon whose Defense Secretary told fellow staffers to ignore the president’s orders – that Nixon was what people typically term crazy. The mad bomber president, not so much. It is emblematic of the imperial presidency that while Nixon could get away with dropping massive ordinance on defenseless populations, his administration was ultimately brought down by his attempts to spy on his political opponents. The power dynamic is obvious.

Why is Trump different? Well, if nothing else, he demonstrates the degree to which even the weak constraints we thought we had had on the presidency were only voluntarily complied with – that these were traditions and norms, not laws. Every president in my lifetime had some substantive exposure to constitutional law and therefore felt compelled in a minor way to observe some limits to their power. Not this president. He knows nothing about constitutional law (inasmuch as he knows nothing, period), and so he acts outside of the usual bounds, and there appears to be no remedy or even accountability for that. I think I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, I had tacitly assumed that the weak controls on the presidency were statutory in some respect, but apparently not so. This needs to change.

If a Democrat wins this year, I’m sure there will be plenty of cooperation across the political spectrum for constraining the presidency (in ways that can easily be reversed by Republicans). But the only truly reliable constraint is an energized, organized citizenry. Unless we put down our electronic devices and start working together on these weighty issues, we can’t expect any better from any future president.

luv u,

jp