The President's Fans Think He'd 'Operate More Effectively' Without Congress or the Courts

[mia]

That is, without checks or balances on his power.

One lesson from this delightful period in American political history is that none of the stories they told you in school—about those Checks and Balances, or the Separation of Powers, or the idea we are a Nation of Laws—were real. To the extent that they ever fully applied to the United States of America in practice, the Trump Era has exposed them as malleable at best.

You see, the laws and the norms and the ethics rules are only real if people in positions of power enforce them. If they ignore them, or are too weak to exercise the powers granted to the offices they hold to stop others ignoring them, these magical forces of democracy cease to functionally exist. The president violates the Constitution's Emoluments Clause on a near-daily basis, but it doesn't seem to matter. He tried to seize funds not appropriated by Congress for his Big, Beautiful Wall, and reportedly offered pardons to people who break the law to get it built. Impeachment is a process expressly laid out in the Constitution, but the president's senior adviser just dismissed it as "unconstitutional." If you have no shame, and your opponents are too feckless to stop you, you can do anything....

Presidents from both parties have continually expanded executive power for decades, and President Obama was a prime example. He increasingly turned to executive orders in response to Rep. McConnell's scorched-earth tactics in the Senate, which in many cases served to thwart the popular will for the benefit of the narrow donor constituency McConnell truly serves. As a former professor of constitutional law, Obama was perhaps best placed to grasp there would be ramifications to this. Many men throughout history have convinced themselves they are justified in running roughshod over the institutions of democracy because they are seeking to realize the popular will or establish justice. When you've got four or eight years to cement your life's legacy, it must be near impossible to sit idly by while your entire agenda is cynically sunk.

In Trump's case, it's unlikely he even thinks in those terms. He does what he needs to do to survive and grift a little more cash. His transgressions against democratic norms and the Constitution dwarf Obama's by many orders of magnitude. In the process, he has trampled so much of what we took for granted in our democracy that it will be hard to dig it all out of the mud and hose it off before someone else comes along to trample it all some more. One lesson of the Roman republic's fall is that politicians learn from what previous politicians did. They saw what they could get away with, and how they could do it smarter. What will the next guy have learned from what Donald Trump was able to get away with? And how primed will their supporters be by then for a new order of things, where The Leader makes policy and everyone else follows it?

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a30105492/republicans-give-president-trump-more-power-pew-poll/

[samnsara]

1. maybe he can buy a tiny island and hire people to be 'subjects' for his little kingdom

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Without Congress and the Courts, making law. Doesn't really work effectively. Exec. Orders...

only apply to federal entities and doesn't cover all, otherwise, rump would be doing exec. orders all of the time. Noticed that he's slowed down on the volume of EOs since he's came into office? I have. Some EOs have been ruled against by the Supreme Court too. Maybe, just maybe he might try doing it the old fashioned way, approach Congress and / or the House and make a new or revised law instead of what he thinks is the easiest way (remember, he's lazy as crap), doesn't want to put in any effort in anything (other than enhancing his sexual appetites, other gross habits).

[Igel]

5. Not a new insight.

It would be more efficient and certainly easier to wield power--don't know about "effective"--if the US government was more like China's.

Somebody said that before me.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Ironic isn't it that the Hong Kong protesters are espousing American democratcy values? All...

I can say is that I wish them success in their efforts in Hong Kong and certainly don't hope that the Chinese government resort to brutal tactics to suppress these riots. Tia. Square may have taught the government something but I somehow don't feel too confident.

[RainCaster]

3. I agree with him

He will do very well in prison. No need of courts there.

[marble falls]

4. Why not, Adolf operated so much freer without the Riechstag.