At CNN (!) Frida Ghitis is outraged that President Trump appears to want to rule rather than govern:
But whether by design or by impulse, Trump is in practice following the authoritarian playbook. He displays the instincts of a populist autocrat. He didn’t need to read books about Mussolini, study Hugo Chavez’s maneuvers, or become schooled in the tactics of Vladimir Putin. He has shown these things are in his blood.
Indeed, he appears not to want to govern so much as rule.
She seems to have forgotten President Obama’s distaste for the political process and his imperious style of governing, for which his high rate of reversal by the Supreme Court—the highest of any president in the post-war period, frequently in unanimous decisions, serves as adequate documentation.
If you give presidents imperial powers, they will, remarkably, start behaving like emperors. You may even attract would-be emperors to seek the presidency. The solution is to restore the Constitutional balance and have the Congress take back the reins of government which the Constitution gives it.
Related: Congress’s approval rating is lower than Trump’s.
When we have a national crisis and Trump attempts to suspend parts of the Constitution, we should make every effort to remind Democrats they worked to give Obama the extraordinary powers that Trump will utilize.
And that they viciously attacked anyone who at the time voice even mild objections.
I do not know where the notion that choices have no consequences came from but the idea does seem to be endemic.
It’s no more complicated than the two guys watching a football game howling at the refs, only to knowingly wink and grin at each other when the refs let one go their team’s way.
When you rely on adherence to rules, even-handedness and a sense of duty on the part of the refs, constitutionally the judiciary and legislative in our government, and the press outside, and then stack and mutilate the process this is what you get.
Wasn’t it Franklin who quipped about the question of what he and his cohorts had achieved “a Republic, if you can keep it.”
What is unusual about Trump is that the is doing this when his party controls both parties in Congress.
Steve
That should tell you something about your implicit assumption.
Should tell you something about Trump’s deal making ability.
Steve