Philip Wallach of the American Enterprise Institute raises concerns about one aspect of the new president’s approach to his office.
President Donald Trump offered up a quotation of his own: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
Apparently originating with Napoleon Bonaparte, Trump here is brashly embracing the idea of personalistic rule. Just weeks into his second administration, the returning president has made clear that he believes rule-following is a sucker’s game in a town where the rules have been set by corrupted interests. With truly astonishing frankness, he is willing to raise the question of whether law is unable to offer the American people the government they deserve, making a resort to personal rule strictly necessary. If America’s basic commitment to the rule of law is to survive Trump’s challenge to it, it is going to need defenders in many quarters, some of which would be quite unexpected sources of “resistance.”
To understand why Trump believes he can get away with expressing such contempt for our rule of law tradition, we must start by admitting that presidents of both parties have been eroding it for quite a while. The George W. Bush administration gave us “extraordinary rendition” in response to the horrific September 11 attacks, and a debate raged during his presidency over whether the president was actually bound by the statutes he signed into law. Barack Obama became the “pen and phone” president once Republicans secured control of the House of Representatives, refashioning immigration law on the basis of his administration’s ability to decline prosecution and undertaking an ambitious climate change program on the basis of decades-old law. …
… As executive power expands, Americans’faith in the lawmaking process as the pillar of a free republic has been ebbing —with disastrous consequences. Take, for example, the national debt. Trump and his allies have been sounding the alarm about America’s out-of-control annual deficits—indeed, this is the major justification for the new administration’s aggressive, legally dubious firings and apparent unilateral decisions to end various programs established by law—yet their supposed concern about the debt has not resulted in any attempts to seriously tackle our fiscal woes through the exercise of Congress’ power of the purse.
