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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWill Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/will-donald-trump-destroy-the-presidency/537921/?utm_source=fbbWill Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?
He disdains the rule of law. Hes trampling norms of presidential behavior. And hes bringing vital institutions down with him.
Jack Goldsmith October 2017 Issue Politics
Donald Trump is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors. We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress (including members of his own party), and even senior officials within his own administration. Trump is a Frankensteins monster of past presidents worst attributes: Andrew Jacksons rage; Millard Fillmores bigotry; James Buchanans incompetence and spite; Theodore Roosevelts self-aggrandizement; Richard Nixons paranoia, insecurity, and indifference to law; and Bill Clintons lack of self-control and reflexive dishonesty.
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm, James Madison wrote in one of the Federalist Papers during the debates over the ratification of the Constitution. He was right, but he never could have imagined Donald Trump.
At this point in the singular Trump presidency, we can begin to assess its impact on American democracy. The news thus far is not all bad. The Constitutions checks and balances have largely stopped Trump from breaking the law. And while he has hurt his own administration, his successors likely wont repeat his self-destructive antics. The prognosis for the rest of our democratic culture is grimmer, however. Trumps bizarre behavior has coarsened politics and induced harmful norm-breaking by the institutions he has attacked. These changes will be harder to undo.
Trump, in short, is wielding a Soprano touch on American institutions. Im fucking King Midas in reverse here, Tony Soprano once told his therapist. Everything I touch turns to shit.
snip//
Citizens trust in American institutions has been in decline for a while. Thats one reason Donald Trump was elected. His assault on those institutions, and the defiant reactions to his assault, will further diminish that trust and make it yet harder to resolve social and political disputes. The breakdown in institutions mirrors the breakdown in social cohesion among citizens that was also a major cause of Trumpism, and that Trumpism has churned further. This is perhaps the worst news of all for our democracy. As Cass Sunstein lamented in his book #Republic, Members of a democratic public will not do well if they are unable to appreciate the views of their fellow citizens, if they believe fake news, or if they see one another as enemies or adversaries in some kind of war.
To that depressing conclusion I will add another. The relatively hopeful parts of the analysis offered herethat the Constitution has prevented presidential law-breaking, and that most of Trumps norm violations will not persistrest on a pair of assumptions that have so far prevailed but that might not hold in the future. The first is that Trumps presidency, which has accomplished little, will continue to fail and that he will not be reelected. But it is conceivable that he will turn things aroundfor example, by pulling off tax and infrastructure reform and putting Kim Jong Un in a boxand win the 2020 election, perhaps in a three-way race. If Trump succeeds and makes it to a second term, his norm-breaking will be seen to serve the presidency more than it does today. If that happens, the office will be forever changed, and not for the better.
The second assumption is that the country is fundamentally stable. In Trumps first seven months in office, the stock market boomed and the United States faced no full-blown national-security crisis. But what if the economy collapses, or the country faces a major domestic terrorist attack or even nuclear war? What if Mueller finds evidence that Trump colluded with the Russiansand Trump fires not just Mueller but also scores of others in the Justice Department, and pardons himself and everyone else involved? These are not crazy possibilities. The Constitution has held thus far and might continue to do so under more-extreme circumstances. But it also might not.
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Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency? (Original Post)
babylonsister
Oct 2017
OP
jodymarie aimee
(3,975 posts)1. will??
ALREADY HAS...
imanamerican63
(13,750 posts)2. ....
Right on!
Turbineguy
(37,295 posts)3. No.
Just his.
Vinca
(50,237 posts)4. No, but it's going to be a helluva mess to clean up. He'll probably destroy the GOP.
Me.
(35,454 posts)5. No, That BlowHard Isn't Big Enough To Do That