Jeet Heer of the Nation wrote A Biden Administration Will Have To Confront Trump's Corruption on August 7th. That article has been on my mind since then, and I have come to the conclusion that it is misguided. I normally laud Mr. Heer’s writing, but in this case, I can’t agree. Heer writes:
The singular fact about Trump’s corruption is that he has shown how much a president can get away with as long as Congress is complicit or cowed.
Arthur Schlesinger in 1973 published his landmark analysis The Imperial Presidency. In it, Schlesinger argues that the single mind of the President will always be able to act more quickly than the Congress. As Heer notes above, a complicit Congress exacerbates this even further. The Republican Senate chose not to hear witnesses in the Removal Trial.
There is an excellent Wikipedia summary for The Imperial Presidency. It contains arguments for and against Schlesinger’s theory. In the list of arguments against, it is stunning how many rely on established norms, and how many Trump and his lawlessness have perverted.
- The organization and functioning of most of the federal government is determined by law, and the president has thus little power to reorganize it.
We only need to consider Trump’s hollowing of the Bureaucracy, and his installation of cronies and acting Department heads to quickly dispense with this restriction. The Post Office debacle alone has been a horrifying example.
- A battery of post-Nixon controls on executive power, including transparency rules and "watchdog bureaucracies" such as the federal Inspectors General, a strengthened Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office.
All neutered in the reality of a complicit Senate.
- Declining regulation of the private sector, as a consequence of the post-Reagan shift to neoliberal policies, economic globalization, and the growth of corporate lobbies.
In fact, neoliberalism has exacerbated economic inequity, and right wing think tanks supported by concentrated wealth are on the mission of supporting demagoguery.
- Declining executive discretion over the use of federal funds, which are increasingly committed to mandatory programs.
Considering Trump’s redirection of Pentagon and FEMA funds toward his pet projects and to support his Executive Orders, this supposed restriction is laughable.
Heer wrote that Mr. Biden is reluctant to prosecute a former President, and I agree. That job can be left to the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York, who are hinting that they have the goods on Mr. Trump. Biden as President can cite that his independent Attorney General and the Southern District are continuing work begun before his election.
The Congress investigating Trump the individual invites a partisan fight. Republican Senators will hear from their constituents and oppose any meaningful progress.
What the new Administration does need to investigate the norms that were broken, and to shore those norms up as law. Trump has proven that norms will not restrict of person of his non-existent ethics, and has also proven that the American people cannot be trusted to elect good stewards.
Investigating the government will not create a partisan fight. Republican Senators can easily vote for law to restrict future Presidents. And they must.
The Department of Justice has to be the starting point. Trump’s weaponization of the Attorney General can never be allowed to occur again. A very good point from the comments regards shoring up the Independent Prosecutor law.
I do not think that I am alone is desiring justice to be meted out upon Mr. Trump. He has allowed at least 200,000 American citizen to die on his watch. The list of his crimes is literally endless. First and foremost, however, we must strengthen our Republic. Mr. Trump has demonstrated to us just how fragile it really is.
We must be reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s words, “a Republic, if we can keep it.”
