Jan.05

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

How Does Trump Get Away with It?

How does Trump get away with so much abuse of power and corruption that would have sunk any other politician long ago? If Ronald Reagan, either of the Bushes, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama had started a multi-billion-dollar crypto business supported by foreign governments, or pardoned drug dealers, campaign contributors, or political supporters to the extent Trump has, they would have been toast. Clinton's pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich on the last day of his presidency sparked outrage for years. Just one questionable pardon to the ex-husband of a big Democratic donor was a story people are still talking about. Clinton knew that there would be a huge reaction, so it saved it for his last day in office when he couldn't be impeached for it. Trump has issued hundreds of much more problematic pardons and it is just business as usual. How has he gotten away with behaving so much worse than any previous president?

Thomas Edsel, of The New York Times, wrote a column about this and has some possible ideas, as follows:

• No Guilt: Clinton knew that what he was doing was wrong, which is why he tried to bury it on the last day of his term. Trump has no concept of right and wrong. He has only a concept of a transaction. What will you give me and what do I have to give you in return? If he is getting something more valuable than what he is giving, he is for it, otherwise no. Morality plays no role at all with him. He does not feel guilty when it is pointed out what he has done is wrong. It just bounces off him when it might upset another politician.
  
  
• The Media: The news media—and everyone else—are much more polarized than even in the recent past. To Democrats, every Republican is a crook. To Republicans, every Democrat is a crook. If a Democrat criticizes Trump it is brushed off as partisanship. If a Republican were to criticize Trump, it might be taken seriously, but few do. The media report criticism this way, indulging in botesidesism, so it has no effect.
  
  
• Wokeness: The Democrats' alleged attachment to wokeness has poisoned many people's view of them. This makes others inclined to write off all their criticism of Trump to wokeness. A recent poll showed that the average Republican voter thinks that all Democrats care about are gay people and trans people. Under these conditions, they don't take anything the Democrats say seriously.
  
  
• Structural Frailty: The Constitution was not designed to deal with a rogue president and a supine Congress. The only penalty is impeachment and conviction. That is too hard to get. Imagine if the only penalty in the criminal law was the death penalty. Parking ticket? Death! Stealing a newspaper from a newsstand? Death! Punching someone who insulted you? Death! Maybe there should have been some other penalties, like having a majority of each chamber of Congress be able to fine the president or withhold his salary, but that isn't in there.
  
  
• Supreme Court: The Court has enabled Trump by not slapping him down hard when it could have. When he signed an XO revoking birthright citizenship, the Court could have instantly responded with: "Is the president off his rocker? This is a complete violation of the Constitution. Case dismissed 9-0." Didn't happen.
  
  
• Cowardly Republican Senators: The founders thought the Senate will be full of wise men who were free from having to run for reelection every 2 years and would do what was best for their states and the country. They were completely wrong. Republicans in the Senate could easily rein Trump in if they had the spines for it. "You want this judge approved? First tear up XO's [X], [Y[, and [Z], or no judge" They have less courage than the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz. Heck, they have less courage than Trump, which is really saying something. SACO.
  
  
• Skewed Economic Growth: Conservative areas of the country, mostly rural and exurban, are stagnating. Urban areas on the coasts are doing fine. This makes make Republican voters think that urban liberals are stealing their prosperity somehow, and Trump has convinced them he can fix it.

A key problem is that the Executive Branch is unified under a single president, but all the sources of opposition are terribly fragmented. When the big law firms were attacked, they could have all adopted a tough stance together. If every one agreed to defend the others in court if need be, they would have been much stronger. If the universities had formed a pool of funds from their endowments to keep the lights on and research going while court cases played out, they could all have stood up to Trump and he would have backed down. That is true in every sector. This is why workers formed unions 100 years ago. They were much stronger that way. The threatened actors now didn't get the memo.

Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, writes: "The Democratic Party and its cultural vanguard have spent nearly a decade hyperventilating over every transgression, enforcing a rigid cultural orthodoxy misaligned with average voters, and gaslighting the public about the visible cognitive decline of the previous president. They have cried wolf so often, and with such performative hysteria, that the American electorate has gone deaf."

While Westwood points to partisan failure, Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at Berkeley, disagrees and says the problem is structural failure. Congress no longer has an incentive to criticize a president of its own party for many reasons. The Supreme Court has a large conservative majority that both aligned with the current president and also afraid of him. Those checks and balances turned out to be very weak when really tested.

Both Westwood and Grumbach could be right. (V)