Category: impeachment

A Debate on Presidential Power

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February 16, 2025

by Stephen Stofka

This is part of a series on centralized power. This week’s debate is about the power of the President relative to the other branches of the federal government. The debates are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Abel began the conversation. “Our country is founded on the principle of federalism, a sharing of power between the states and a centralized government in Washington. In that central authority are three branches that balance and check each other’s ambitions for power. It looks like Trump is challenging those restraints.”

Cain shrugged. “The Speaker of the House doesn’t seem worried. The Congress hasn’t been able to get anything done. It’s been almost thirty years since Congress completed a full budget (Source – pdf). The executive branch is stuck with the burden of implementing years of legislative compromises. It is entirely appropriate that the President clean up the mess.”

Abel shook his head in disbelief. “Trump is taking control of the purse, a power given to Congress by the Constitution. Doesn’t it worry you that a Democratic president could simply undo any laws passed by a Republican legislature?”

Cain looked puzzled. “If the President gets out of line, the Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach the President.”

Abel laughed. “Trump has already been impeached twice. Never in the history of this country has the Senate convicted a President. Impeachment is an empty threat. After the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the President immunity from criminal prosecution, the President can act like a king.”

Cain frowned. “FDR expanded the scope of the executive when he took office in 1933. Did your group sound the alarm then? Did you cry ‘Constitutional crisis’ when Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court to get his way? No, your group stood by silently as Roosevelt upended 150 years of tradition. This President is trying to undo that shameful legacy, to return this country to its founding roots.”

Abel showed his disdain. “He is undoing a century of building government institutions that help people, that protect people from the power of large corporations. This is not the America of the 18th century.”

Cain argued, “They are inefficient government institutions that swear allegiance not to the people they serve but Washington lobbyists and their own internal processes. We have a spending crisis. The Constitution gives the President the executive power. Alexander Hamilton argued for a strong executive and President Trump embodies Hamilton’s vision.”

Abel sighed. “You’re talking about the unitary executive theory. Advocates for that theory take Hamilton out of context. He wanted to convince those in the state legislatures that the strong executive in the proposed Constitution was preferred to the weak plural executive that had been defined in the Articles of Confederation. Hamilton was not advocating for a President with all the powers of a king. The country had fought seven bloody years to rid themselves of a king.”

Cain shook his head. “Look, Washington and Jefferson set the example. They were strong Presidents who sat at the top of the executive hierarchy. They didn’t ask Congress for permission. They defined their role as the chief executive of the laws.”

Abel interrupted. “Ok, but the executive branch was small in the early 19th century. Employees worked at the whim of the President. As the country grew, there needed to be more stability in the executive work force. Congress wanted more control or supervision of the various departments. After all, it is Congress who writes the laws. Congress represents the people. The President is the people’s agent, executing the laws that the representatives of the people have passed.”

Cain held up his hand. “Look, you’re describing a clerk, not the leader of a country. Hamilton was arguing for a leader with enough power to meet threats from other countries led by monarchs with absolute power.”

Abel argued, “That was another century when even the mightiest rulers had relatively little firepower at their command. We have invented weapons that are too destructive to put at any person’s command. There have to be checks and balances within the executive just as there are within the legislative and judicial branches.”

Cain shook his head. “The more destructive the weapons, the more we need a strong leader with the authority and power to act decisively to answer any threats from other countries.”

Abel frowned. “There has to be checks and balances within each branch. That’s especially true for the executive. All previous empires have fallen because one person gained too much power. Rome, Persia, Egypt, and Byzantium come to mind. There are too many temptations. A President with control of the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be able to adjust the monthly unemployment numbers or inflation report to make his administration look good. Argentina did this for seven years (Source). China, Venezuela and Hungary do it. He could disallow the counting of some of the population by the Census Bureau to reduce some grant funding for states who did not vote for him.

Cain scoffed. “There are checks and balances between Congress and the Executive. If a President were to ‘cook the books,’ that information would be leaked. The Congress could impeach the President.”

Abel’s expression was stern. “When the founders wrote the impeachment rules, they envisioned a system without political parties. In a party system, the President is the leader of the party. Impeachment is not a check. If the House is the same party as the President, they dare not bring their leader up on impeachment charges. A Democratic-led House would not impeach Andrew Jackson in 1833. All the anti-Jacksonian majority in the Senate could do was censure Jackson.”

 Cain argued, “In 1868, the Republican-led House impeached Andrew Johnson.”

Abel shook his head. “Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Lincoln on a third-party ticket called the Union Party (Source).”

Cain’s tone of voice was conceding. “Ok, maybe impeachment is not the ideal check on a President. But they pay attention to popular opinion. If the public is outraged, they will complain to their representatives. Presidents care about public opinion.”

Abel showed a wry smile. “George Bush’s poll numbers fell as low as 25% (Source). What did that accomplish? There is an entire phalanx of advisors who shield the President from disheartening news. A President lives in an information bubble designed to protect his self-confidence.”

Cain argued, “Well, there are no checks on the Supreme Court. They have lifetime tenure and the last one to be impeached was in 1805 (Source). They control their own agenda. The House and Senate make up their own rules (Source) and have no internal Constitutional checks. In the Senate, the Majority Leader controls all the floor time. If he doesn’t want some legislation brought to the floor, it isn’t considered. The President should have the same authority over officials in the executive branch. He should be able to direct them on how he wants the law executed. His decisions should not be subject to review by a court.”

Abel frowned. “You’re describing the unitary executive theory again. It grants the President most of the powers of a king. We know that Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and the other founders did not want a king. This country rejected rule by the whim of one person, the king. We are a nation of laws, not whims. Trump and Musk are two rich crackpots who dance to the music of their own whims. The wolves in Russia and China are licking their chops. By the time Trump is done, this country will be weaker.”

Cain scoffed. “This country was already weak. That’s what the President is trying to fix. The country has $36 trillion dollars in debt. We’re spending more on interest than we do on defense. We play mister nice guy, letting other countries take advantage of our charity, then vote against our interests in the U.N. DOGE is going to trim the discretionary items in the budget then look to implement fraud controls in mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Trump has shown he’s a tough negotiator.”

Abel laughed. “Trump changes his mind from day to day, from week to week. It’s a sign of weakness that Putin and Xi will take advantage of.”

Cain shook his head. “The President dances like Muhammed Ali in the ring. That’s what we need. A fighter who keeps other countries hesitant to make any aggressive moves. That’s the road to a cautious peace.”

Abel sighed. “It’s only a few weeks since Trump took office. He will leave a trail of chaos and carnage and half of the people in this country won’t hold him responsible.”

Cain laughed. “And the other half of the country thinks he’s the devil. That says more about all of us than it does President Trump. We’ll talk next week.”

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Image by ChatGPT

The scene is set in a grand hall with tall columns, chandeliers, and intricate tapestries. A majestic king is seated on a grand throne, dressed in luxurious royal robes adorned with gold and jewels. Several people kneel before him in deep reverence, wearing medieval-style clothing.

The Bargain

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August 2, 2020

by Steve Stofka

Deep below the U.S. Capitol Building, several men stand guard outside a door. Inside the room are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. With each of them is an aide.

“If you can arrange a voice vote to impeach on Monday, my members can deliver the needed two-thirds majority to convict,” the Senator says. “Vice-President Pence will serve out the term. Utah Senator Mitt Romney has agreed to accept the party’s nomination this August.”

Ms. Pelosi eyes McConnell warily. “We like our chances against Trump. Romney’s a moderate that a lot of Republican voters – maybe even some Democratic voters – will welcome. I need more.”

McConnell clears his throat. “I’ll reduce the liability protections for big businesses, but my members will not budge on lawsuit protections for smaller businesses. This is something your own members can get behind. Who doesn’t like small business in America?”

Pelosi motions to her aide who hands her a summary of the second relief bill that the House passed in May. She glances at it. McConnell fights the smile that tugs at the left corner of his mouth. Pelosi is not fooling him. The paper is a sham. She’s got her demands memorized.

“Revoke the SALT provision in the tax bill,” Pelosi says. McConnell shakes his head. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, for God’s sake, Mitch. We can argue it out in the next Congress. One year of relief. One year only.”

“You agree to the one trillion package we passed this week,” McConnell says.

“We passed a three trillion dollar bill back in May and your members and the White House couldn’t agree on how much the American people should suffer,” Pelosi accuses him.

“Unlike your coalition, Nancy, ours comes from a lot of diverse areas from all over the country,” McConnell argues. “They have a wide range of concerns and perspectives.”

“White concerns, white perspectives,” Pelosi shoots back. “I need more help for state and local governments.”

“States like Illinois and New Jersey have underfunded their public pension plans for years,” McConnell says. “We’re not using the Covid crisis to bail out corrupt state politicians with no fiscal discipline.”

“We’ll set up a joint oversight committee to monitor how the states and cities spend the money,” Pelosi offers.

“Money is fungible,” McConnell says. “No way to properly monitor it. I’ve got too many members from small states who have struggled for years to attract good talent for city and state government. They couldn’t offer fancy pension packages. They were responsible. Their pension funds are not badly underfunded like Illinois. They just won’t go for it.”

“I’ll take SALT off the table and meet you two-thirds of the way on aid to the states and cities. You’ll look like a tough negotiator, but I’ll have to go back to my members and tell them that I gave away $1.5 trillion in aid that they voted for in May. You want to build fighter jets that the Air Force doesn’t want and yet you’re taking money away from students and teachers? That will be a good campaign ad this fall.”

“Not negotiable, Nancy. My members will take their chances with Trump if I give in on the military aid. Too many communities depend on that production. I’ll go halfway on aid to state and local governments.”

Pelosi turns to her aide. “How much is the final package?” McConnell knows that she has calculated exactly what the figure is. The aide says $1.6 trillion. Pelosi holds out her hand and they shake. “I’ll make the announcement at 9 A.M. on Monday.” She and the aide leave the room.

“Stop, stop, stop,” my wife says as she shakes me awake. “You’re yelling ‘you won’t believe it!’ over and over.”

It’s still dark out but the first half-light of early dawn is in the sky. Boy, it seemed so real. I sit up.

“This is not like you,” she says. “What won’t I believe?”

I give her a hug. “Never mind. Sorry I woke you.” I lay down and go back to sleep.

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Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash

Remove Impeachment?

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February 9, 2020

By Steve Stofka

Despite a strong labor market and a rising stock market, last year’s deficit was the largest in seven years (Tankersly, 2020). The tax cut package of 2017 has not delivered the promised economic growth. The first estimate of 2019 GDP annual growth was 2.3% (FRED, n.d.), the average during the past four years of the Obama administration. According to Mr. Trump, that growth rate was a “disaster” under Obama. Now it is a good growth rate. In his State of the Union address this week, President Trump said that “our economy is the best it has ever been” (CPR, 2020).

Growth during the three years of the Trump administration has averaged 2.5%, slightly above the tepid rate of growth under Obama. The growth standard is 3.0%, the average during the last fifty years of the 20th century.

How to make a tired nag of an economy look like a racehorse? The White House Council of Economic Advisors compared GDP growth during the Trump administration to growth projections of 2.0% made before the 2016 election (CEA, 2020). That comparison makes the growth rate look ½% higher than expectations. A component of GDP growth is government spending, whether that spending is borrowed or not. That additional growth has come at the expense of the Federal debt (CBO, 2020).

Like the Obama administration before, the Trump administration has bought itself GDP growth by borrowing money from the rest of the world and spending it. Without those annual deficits, GDP growth would have been negative for the past 15 years. The stock market has climbed 33% since the 2016 election because the money is flowing freely from Washington and the Federal Reserve. The amount of borrowed and printed money that the Federal government pumps into the economy creates additional profits for companies.

As predicted, President Trump was found not guilty by the Senate. Since the founding of the country, three Presidents have been tried for impeachment but not convicted. Let’s look at the Presidents who were not impeached even though they committed arguably impeachable offenses.

 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not impeached by a Democratic House for lying to Congress about the lend lease program to Britain in 1940. President Lyndon Johnson was not impeached by a Democratic House for lying to Congress about the Gulf of Tonkin attack in Vietnam in 1964 (Moise, 2019). President Ronald Reagan was not impeached by a Democratic House for his complicity in selling arms to Iran (Brown U., n.d.).

All of these were matters were of grave national importance to the American people. President Clinton was impeached by a Republican House for lying to them about his affair with a White House aide. Tawdry, yes. National importance? No.

Since no president has been convicted of impeachment, should we enact a Constitutional amendment to nullify impeachment? The arguments we have today about impeachment reflect the same arguments made by delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 (Klarman, 2016). Some thought that state legislatures should initiate impeachment proceedings. The “New Jersey” plan proposed that a majority of state governors could remove a president. Some wanted to give the Congress power to remove a president at will, but others thought that would make the president subservient to Congress. Thinking that Congress might threaten impeachment as retribution for a presidential veto, some advocated against impeachment at all. Shouldn’t the voters decide, they argued? If the president were elected every two years, the voters could vote a president out of office at the next election. A Presidential term should last longer than two years was the counterargument. Most of the delegates agreed that impeachment was a check on a president and decided to include it in the Constitution.

What offenses should be subject to impeachment? The delegates disagreed on that as well. Some thought it should be for “malpractice or neglect of duty” but others thought the offenses needed to be more serious. “Treason, bribery, and corruption” was suggested, but “corruption” was not specific enough. “Maladministration” was proposed but was rejected. How about “other high crimes and misdemeanors against the State?” Well, that was more specific than “corruption” and “maladministration,” but not too specific as to straitjacket Congress. The final language inserted in the Constitution was “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). Today, we argue about that wording. Go figure.

When the Constitution was written, the delegates did not contemplate a political system with two parties. Within two decades, they realized their mistake and initiated the 12th Amendment to have the president and vice-president elected together from the same party.

Some Constitutional delegates worried that the impeachment process would become politicized. History has shown that they were right. Should we admit that a conviction of impeachment is practically impossible? We must either lower the threshold for conviction in the Senate from a super-majority of 67 Senators to a majority vote, or remove the idea of impeachment from the Constitution entirely. What do you think?

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Notes:

Brown U. Research. (n.d.) Understanding the Iran-Contra Affairs: The Beginning of the Affair. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/i-thebeginning.php

Colorado Public Radio (CPR). Transcript & Video: President Donald Trump’s 2020 State Of The Union. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.cpr.org/2020/02/04/transcript-video-president-trumps-2020-state-of-the-union/

Congressional Budget Office (CBO). (2020, January). Budget and Economic Data. Retrieved from https://www.cbo.gov/about/products/budget-economic-data#2 Note: 2019’s Federal deficit was 4.7% of GDP, 40% higher than the 3.3% deficit in 2016, the last year of the Obama administration.

Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). (2020, January 30). United States GDP Growth Continues Exceeding Expectations. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/united-states-gdp-growth-continues-exceeding-expectations/

Federal Reserve (FRED). (2020, January 30).  Real Gross Domestic Product (GDPC1). [Web page]. Retrieved from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

Klarman, M. J. (2016). The framers coup: the making of the United States Constitution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (pp 235-237).

Moïse Edwin E. (2019). Tonkin Gulf and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, (Preface). Sample retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0UEnAnvQ978C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=gulf+of+tonkin+vietnam+war

Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

Tankersley, J. (2020, January 13). Budget Deficit Topped $1 Trillion in 2019. NY Times. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/business/budget-deficit-1-trillion-trump.html

A Normal Week

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February 2, 2020

by Steve Stofka

Tuesday was the first day of President Trump’s impeachment trial. Mr. Trump borrowed former President Clinton’s impeachment playbook and got busy. He flew to Davos, Switzerland to give a speech at the World Economic Forum.

The speech was constructed of many truth stretchers. Instead of boasting about the economy’s strong employment, Mr. Trump had to say that the numbers are the best. They are not. Doesn’t matter. While Mr. Trump’s political opponents are spending time and energy disputing his boasts and lies, he is on to the next speech, the next carefully arranged event.

Facts are musical notes in a score designed to showcase his greatness. Mr. Trump is the bandleader. In politics, performance is key and he is a good performer. He is the boss of facts. Disagreeable facts are out of tune and “fake.” Sit down fake news media. Stop playing.

President Trump cites a statistic that there are more women than men in the workforce for the first time in history. They are not. That happened in 2009 under former President Obama’s watch. This is not a good statistic. It means that men in traditional male jobs are losing their jobs. In 2009, it was the massive unemployment in construction after the housing crisis. Until a year ago, job openings in manufacturing had climbed steadily (BLS, n.d.). In 2019, Mr. Trump’s trade war with China led to thousands of factory job losses and a sharp decline in job openings.

Those who do follow economic numbers know these are truth stretchers or truth wreckers as soon as the words leave Mr. Trump’s lips. That’s a small percentage of the general population. In an age of ready access to information, there is too much information. We struggle to separate the wheat – reliable information from a reputable source – from the chaff – those who shade or hide the truth to push a point of view.

To a casual ear, Mr. Trump sounds like he knows what he is talking about when he says 150 billion of this and 200 million of that. He pulls numbers out of the air just as a magician pulls a quarter from behind a child’s ear. When questioned by reporters, members of his own party answer that they can’t speak to what Mr. Trump says or tweets. They are afraid of retribution. He is the Teflon President. No accountability and no shame. 

A president must perform. A good performer tells enough of the truth to tell a convincing story. Lying is a part of any president’s job. They must lie to foreign leaders as they play the international game of political poker. Presidents lie to hide uncomfortable truths from the American people. They lie to protect themselves, members of their cabinet and party. Until a presidential candidate takes the oath of office, they may not realize the full extent of the lies they must tell. It’s one of the stresses that make the job so difficult.

There is important and unimportant stuff to lie about. Mr. Trump lies about silly stuff that matter only to him. Who cares whether some people think he has small hands? He does. Whether he had a smaller inauguration crowd than Mr. Obama? Mr. Trump cares. Whether he understands the dictator of N. Korea better than everyone else? He does. He insists that he is a better president than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Braggadocio?

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Notes:

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). (n.d.). Job Openings: Manufacturing JTS3000JOL. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS3000JOL

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

A Lump Of Coal

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December 22, 2019

by Steve Stofka

While going through the personal items my mom left behind, I found a picture of her and some childhood friends lounging on the grass. The girls were dressed in simple clean dresses that looked homemade. The boys were dressed in pants whose legs could not keep up with a 7th grader’s growth spurt. The year was about 1934, the place a farming community in Texas during the Great Depression.

When we were kids, my mom would not allow us to call someone names. Cursing was out. No surprise there. Even popular pejoratives like “fink,” “bozo,” and “retard” were out as well. “I will not have my children behaving like cheap white trash,” she would say. We never got a definition of cheap white trash. We could only get a sense of it. Bad manners, an insensitivity to the feelings of others, a lack of respect for authority and other people’s property, a lack of responsibility. Cheap white trash was not about a bunch of depression-era kids dressed in simple clothes. It was not about being poor in material wealth; it was about being poor in spirit.

President Trump is our century’s version of the circus ringmaster P.T. Barnum. Almost half of voters chose him in the hope that he could tame the beasts in Washington. He behaves in a brash and boorish manner that is better fit for a wrestling persona than a president. Mr. Trump’s overbearing manner echoes that of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian Prime Minister and billionaire media mogul.  

This week the House of Representatives voted to impeach Mr. Trump on two counts, one of which was obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry. Unlike previous impeachment proceedings, Mr. Trump refused to testify on his own behalf and blocked the testimony of several material witnesses. After the vote of impeachment, he sent a six-page letter to the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. The letter detailed his explanation of events and voiced his condemnation of the House’s impeachment process (Trump, 2019).

Mr. Trump is a champion of insensitivity who claims to be above the rules of propriety but holds his perceived enemies to a rigid code of conduct. One of the many contradictions that makes him such a colorful character.

I heard an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition this week. One of the program’s hosts, Steve Inskeep, interviewed a spokeswoman for the White House about the impeachment (NPR, 2019). Mr. Inskeep had to interrupt several times when her assertions contradicted known facts. She attempted several versions of the history of the impeachment proceedings. She reminded me of a running back who hits the defensive line, is rebuffed and persistently tries another opening.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader and the person who single-handedly controls the journey of most legislation, has promised to closely coordinate with the White House during a Senate impeachment trial. According to Ms. Pelosi, about 275 bipartisan bills passed by the House this year are buried in Mr. McConnell’s desk (C-Span, 2019). He is up for re-election in 2020 and faces challengers from the party’s base in his home state of Kentucky. He is standing very close to President Trump as a matter of survival, not principle. The first principle of political success is to get re-elected.

Politics in a democracy is a messy affair of conflict and compromise, bare knuckle bargaining and chess master tactics. Relatively few of us enter the field. Those who do must convince themselves that they have not compromised their character even when they had to compromise their principles. Many campaigned hard to get elected to office and work even harder to stay elected.

For more than two years of former President Obama’s first term, Mr. Trump was a leading spokesman for the “birther” movement to nullify Mr. Obama’s presidency because his birth certificate was a forgery. Only after Mr. Trump secured the Republican nomination in 2016 did he admit that Mr. Obama was born in the U.S. and that his presidency had been legitimate (NPR, 2016). In a touch of irony characteristic of an episode of the Twilight Zone, the House has put a certificate of another sort, the black mark of impeachment, in Mr. Trump’s Christmas stocking. He promised to revive the coal industry. Now he has his lump of coal.

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C-Span. (2019, December 19). House Speaker Weekly Briefing. [Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.c-span.org/video/?467564-1/speaker-pelosi-wait-senate-trial-details-naming-impeachment-managers

NPR. (2019, December 19). White House Responds to Impeachment. [Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/12/19/789704256/white-house-responds-to-impeachment

NPR. (2016, September 16). Without Apology, Trump Now Says: ‘Obama Was Born In’ The U.S. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2016/09/16/494231757/without-apology-trump-now-says-obama-was-born-in-the-u-s

Photo by Nick Nice at Unsplash.com

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. (2019, December 17). Letter to: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives. [Web Page]. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Letter-from-President-Trump-final.pdf

The Shark in Washington

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September 29, 2019

By Steve Stofka

Before I get into a historical perspective on this week’s goings on in Washington, let’s look at a troubling indicator in the latest consumer confidence survey. September’s survey from the Conference Board indicated a high negative gap between consumers’ expectations and their current conditions (Note #1). This gap is measured by subtracting consumer responses about their current conditions from their expectations of the near future. If I am doing well now but worried about my job in the next six months to a year, that loss of confidence in the future will show up as a negative gap between current conditions and expectations in the survey.

The level of negativity is higher than it was at the start of the recession in late-2007 or the latter part of 2001 when the tragedy of 9-11 occurred. Not only do poor expectations precede a recession, they help create that very recession in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As the economy recovers from a recession, the gap reverses and turns positive; i.e. expectations are higher than current conditions. A person may be out of a job but some of their friends are finding work, so they expect to soon find work. The gap turned positive in 1990 after that recession, again in 2002 and in 2009.

Let’s turn to the events that dominated the news this week. An impeachment inquiry will certainly draw the attention of the White House from trade negotiations with China and may dampen any bullish sentiment in the stock market. What lessons can we learn from history?

A brief recap. In a July 25th, 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump asked him to investigate Joe Biden and his son in connection with a Ukrainian gas company. Joe Biden is a former Vice-President and potential Democratic presidential rival in the 2020 election. In an apparent cover-up, the record of the call was kept in a top-secret classified directory. A formal complaint filed by a whistleblower in early August was not acted on until a leak brought the whole affair to light. Is this an impeachable offense? You be the judge. Depends on which side of the political aisle you sit on.

There is an odd similarity between the presidency of Donald Trump and the first term of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Clinton’s first two years 1993-4 were punctuated with various financial and sexual scandals from his time as governor of Arkansas. The political arena is a shark tank, but the sharks don’t attack until they smell blood in the water.

Republicans attacked Clinton for his lack of character just as Democrats attack Trump now. Both men give good cause. If you’re a Democrat you’ll say, “Oh no, Clinton was nowhere as bad as Trump.” If you’re a Republican, you think the opposite. We can dispute the degree of shadiness, but both are shady dealers.

In 1994, after 40 years in the political desert, Republicans won control of the House in a sweeping change of voter sentiment. In 2018, Democrats did the same. In the 1996 election, Republicans put up Bob Dole against Clinton’s re-election campaign. Dole was a military veteran, a long-time member of the House and the majority leader in the Senate for a decade (Note #2). Character and experience can only take a candidate so far in the eyes of voters.

Until the candidacy of Donald Trump, Republicans touted the character of their presidential candidates. Trump flaunted his lack of character and his bloodthirsty negotiating skills. He bragged that if he got conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court and the lower courts, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC and Republicans would still vote for him. Oh, that Donald, partisans said. He sure is different. Trump was the big shark that could take on the corrupt Clintons. Republican voters understood that Trump was a NYC real estate boss who didn’t play by the rules. They were sick of Washington’s rules. They did not “send in the clowns,” the 16 candidates with much more experience and character than Trump. They voted for the shark.

Democrats still don’t get this. “Look at the big bad shark!” they shout as they point at Trump. Republican voters smile.

Trump said he would get judges appointed. He has. He said he would get tax cuts done. He has. Most of the cuts went to the top incomes. A $1 trillion annual subsidy to wealthy people. Republicans believe in trickle down economics. Farmers and others in rural America are waiting for that subsidy to trickle down.

Trump promised to bring jobs back to America. There are more jobs now but not in rural America where his constituency is strongest. Farmers and rural communities have been the chief losers in Trump’s fight against China.

In a recent Gallup Town Hall, Jeffrey Rosen pointed out that Donald Trump is part of an ongoing 4th Constitutional battle since the founding of our country (Note #3). Rosen is the president of the National Constitution Center, a non-partisan organization chartered by Congress to promote and educate the public about the Constitution.

Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans have tried to undo the radical changes to the meaning of the Constitution instituted by FDR. In 1936-37 he threatened to pack the court if they did not approve his New Deal programs. Key members of the court reversed their earlier opinions and found greater powers for the Federal government in the Commerce and general welfare clauses of the Constitution.

In 1987, Democrats in the Senate blocked the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. That appointment would have shifted the weight of opinion on the court toward those justices who preferred a more temperate role for the Federal government as understood by courts before the FDR administration and the Great Depression.

In the past eighty years, Congress has largely abdicated their lawmaking responsibilities to executive agencies whose career employees develop thousands of rules that citizens and companies are expected to follow. This type of rulemaking creates a gap in the checks and balances originally built into the Constitution.

Has Congress delegated too much administrative power to the President? Since President Trump was elected, Democrats have become aware of the dangers of a country run by executive order and rule making agencies. FDR’s cabinet was 6 people. Now it is 23 people under whom millions of people work for the executive branch (Note #5). Is it too big, too ungovernable? Many think so.

Financial regulators stumbled over themselves and failed to understand, report on or curtail the risks that the banks and investment companies were assuming before the financial crisis. The rollout of the health care exchanges under Obamacare was an embarrassment of mismanagement and poor execution. There are numerous other examples of poor agency management and overreach but that’s the subject for another time.

If you think the job of the federal government is to fix things, you will be disappointed over the course of the next year. Congress will accomplish little legislation. If you prefer a minimalist role for the federal government, you are probably thrilled with this prospect. Remember, though, that while you sleep, federal agencies are promulgating new rules and new penalties for non-compliance.  

Almost half of the voters in this country wanted Donald Trump to break things in Washington. He is doing a good job of that so far. If consumer expectations were dropping before this week’s events, they will only be dampened further as the controversies in Washington continue. Already on the decline, investment spending will contract as companies put plans on hold while politicians in Washington play the blame game.

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Notes:

1. The Conference Board. (2019, September 24). Consumer Confidence Survey. [Web page] Retrieved from https://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerconfidence.cfm

2. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Bob Dole. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole

3. National Constitution Center. (2019, September 25). The Battle for the Constitution. [Web page, audiocast]. Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/debate/past-programs/the-battle-for-the-constitution. An overview of the four constitutional battles is from approximately 30:00 to 45:00 in the podcast.

4. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Robert Bork. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork

5. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Cabinet of the United States. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_the_United_States