Lawless in Washington – Will There Be a Donald Trump Edition?

Since 2011, I have written a number of posts about what I saw as President Obama’s overreach of his presidential power.  The titles of the posts explain where I was coming from; here is a sample: “A Presidency Built on Executive Orders, Instead of Laws”; “Lawless in Washington”; and “Ignoring the Constitution is Getting to Be an Obama Administration Trend.”

President Obama’s frequent justification for what I considered his overreach of power was Republican obstructionism.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives and, after 2014, in the Senate too, were unreasonable, he said.  They wouldn’t cooperate to pass the programs America needed.  And the news media, at least the MSM, agreed. 

President Obama said he was elected to solve America’s problems.  When Congress wouldn’t do anything, he was forced to act by executive order.  He didn’t want to, but he had no choice.  Democrats were fine with this.  It was, after all, the Republicans’ fault.  The Republicans were obstructionists.  President Obama had to do something.

The situation is now reversed.  Donald Trump will be President and Republicans will continue to control the Congress.  But the Republicans will only have 52 seats in the Senate.  With 48 seats and the filibuster rules, the Democratic minority will be able stop President Trump from doing many of the things he wants to do. 

The question is: If President Trump tries to implement his programs by issuing the same kinds of executive orders that President Obama did, citing President Obama’s actions as precedent for what he is doing, what will the Democrats do?  Will they agree that he can do it – or will they say it’s different now.  Will they say that President Obama was trying to help the American people; Donald Trump is hurting them.  That President Obama was trying to get things done; Donald Trump is violating the Constitution.

But why should anybody believe them?  How can executive overreach be okay when your person does it but unconstitutional when the other side’s person does it?

This is the problem with ignoring what I have called proper procedure but what may be better called rule of law.  Legal and constitutional limits on a president’s power can’t just apply when the other side is in office.  They have to apply to everybody.  If you ignore proper procedure to do what you want to do, the other side will do the same thing when they are in power – and you can’t complain about legal and constitutional limits.

The problem with expanding the President’s power, like President Obama did, is that it stays expanded when the other side comes into office.  And now, it’s scary to think of Donald Trump exercising the kind of unilateral executive power that Democrats were okay with Barack Obama using.  I wish they would have thought of that when they were cheering on President Obama.