Trump’s mind has often plucked the usefulness of a thing from its encumbering web of intentions and restraints. In his first term, he learned that various executive posts could be filled with “acting” officials while proper appointments awaited confirmation by the Senate. Then he used that item of knowledge to game the confirmation process so aggressively that he had more acting appointees than confirmed ones in his administration. He also learned the trick of asserting executive privilege to frustrate congressional investigations at will.
In his second term, he surged well beyond other presidents (no mean feat) in governing by executive order. He didn’t just abuse the executive order, he settled on it as his usual instrument of power. Having learned that he could work his will by signing his name to a sheet of paper, he proceeded to do so as a matter of course. Even though his own obedient party controls both houses of Congress, he prefers the act of name-signing to the process of passing legislation. He hears that some of his executive orders are illegal, but by the time the law catches up close enough to bite (if it does turn out to have teeth, which he doubts) — well, he’ll think of something. Anyway, his antagonists can’t pump all the water back over the dam.
The framers of the US Constitution saw fit to vest the president with a power which European heads of state — monarchs — traditionally possessed: the nearly unlimited power of pardon. They recognized a few real needs for such a power. Donald Trump recognized endless possibilities. Other presidents have overstepped ethical bounds in the granting of pardons. Trump knows no bounds.
The president is supposed to exercise extreme restraint in using the armed forces for domestic law enforcement, but Trump understands that violating that norm falls crucially short of trying to use them to overthrow local governments or dissolve Congress or place the country under martial law. Short of such abuse, the chain of command is going to rattle all the way down to the last link when shaken by the Commander in Chief. Trump sees that. To find that the Posse Comitatus Act contains loopholes is, with him, to find a way forward as a snake finds a way between rocks. After all, his whole life has been a slithering through loopholes and perfunctorily-kept gates.
Henry Kissinger once remarked that, in dealing with communists, one must understand that they have no rationale for declining to exploit an opportunity. The same awareness is necessary with Donald Trump. If a rule can be broken with impunity, he’ll break it. If a safeguard presupposes any degree of forbearance, or if a system depends in any part on moral rectitude, he’ll yank out that linchpin as sure as you’re born.
It could turn out to be a service to freedom and the rule of law. Suppose Trump doesn’t succeed in wrecking everything for all time. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that he doesn’t. More than a few commentators have lately taken to writing that America is no longer a democracy or a free country or a country governed by laws and that America has become an autocracy or a kleptocracy or a proto-monarchy, as though History’s moving finger had written and moved on. That implies, rashly, that Trump’s successors will have no choice but to operate on his level amid the ruins of blown-up institutions or else that only equally rapacious personalities can ever succeed him. It implies a theory of entropy that need not be accepted out of hand. Donald Trump is very far from being a Carlylean Great Man or even a sketchy template for historical influence. He’s an arrested infant, utterly self-absorbed and self-expressing; ultimately self-consuming. He lives — truly lives, thinks, feels, work-plays — in a make-believe world. At this moment, he thinks he’s managing the violent conflict between Israel and Iran the way a child puts on a paper-doll play in a little cardboard theater, narrating all the while.
THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire in in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
ISRAEL, DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
This is pathetic. Outrageous when one thinks of the office held by the author, but still pathetic when one thinks of the little mind forever stunted. It's politically absurd no matter how one thinks of it: a childish projection of shadow-shapes on the surface of reality.
Pathetic inhabitants of make-believe have their places in history; but they don’t write it, much less when abetted by associates whose own talents are limited to transgression and disruption. The disruption, though it be senseless and disastrous, is not conclusive. It’s a disaster that can incidentally serve a purpose the way a wildfire revitalizes a woodland. Donald Trump has served to crack that which is breakable, and therefore impermissible, in the American system of government. He has shown that democracy, when it really gets going, may disappoint the expectations of eighteenth-century gentlemen and those of twentieth-century universally-educated men and women. He has posed an arduous task of systemic reinforcement, but he has not had the last word.
