A Trump II Silver Lining

At The Edgy Optimist, Zachary Karabell presents a "potted history" of the growth of executive power over history, and argues that this excessive power may have already peaked early in this second Trump Presidency.

Karabell sees Trump as having squandered this power -- which his predecessors used more sparingly -- to the point that Americans will be ready to cut it back down to size.

I agree that the President is squandering his power in terms of helping his country, but not necessarily in terms of consolidating his position atop our political order -- whose Constitution he he plainly sees as a bug rather than a feature.

Worse, while the bond market might well force the President to pretend to be semi-sane about tariffs, it won't slow down his attempts to acquire more power, such as by attempting to stifle dissent or relying on foreign dictators to do the dirty work of imprisoning his enemies. In the former case, he clearly plans to abuse licensing power (which he shouldn't have), and in the latter, he is being helped along in an effort to ignore a court ruling.

That said, if our Republic dodges or survives the various crises Trump seems intent on inflicting, if he doesn't get away with too much, there is hope. Karabell closes:

It remains, however, that the federal government -- and the executive branch in particular -- has grown too powerful relative to the balance that was attempted in the Constitution. The ascension of Trump should be a reminder of that, which even Republicans such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz appear to recognize. And the past week, with a foolish and expansive use of tariff authority having backfired (for now) spectacularly, may mark the apex of that power. In fact, the Trump presidency overall might mark the beginning of the end of the imperial presidency, which has defied earlier predictions of its imminent demise. People want change, for sure, but they don't want change that they don't want. And you would be hard-pressed to find a plurality of Americans who want a more powerful government. That reality, more than the daily reality show of contemporary politics, is what will matter most to our future -- and that is comfort indeed.

The second Trump Presidency is a cartoonish but quite real exemplar of that cliche about crisis being both danger and opportunity: The Founders had recent memory of atrocities by tyrannies of all sorts to draw on as they devised a plan for their new government to be practically impossible to abuse.

To the painful extent that Trump punishes a complacent nation without completely consolidating his power, perhaps there will exist a strong- and lasting-enough appetite for limited government to sustain a dismantling of the imperial presidency.

-- CAV