The morphing U.S. presidency
Happy belated Presidents Day, a celebration of stellar car deals and the sanctity of the Oval Office.
The great presidents, such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, are cherished for their sure hands and bold visions, which in times of real turmoil guided or steadied this country. Past presidents told us that there is a weight associated with being commander in chief, tasked with directing troops into and out of harm’s way and negotiating with the world’s nations. There are difficult decisions faced by every U.S. president, whose challenges are wide-ranging and whose choices have dramatic consequences.
The current occupant of the Oval Office often has been on more uncertain ground.
President Donald Trump has lurched from crisis to crisis of his own making, be it immigrant families separated at the border or an avoidable government shutdown. Now he is provoking a new crisis with a declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall Congress was reluctant to fund.
That funding is setting up a new constitutional clash. And with the looming report by special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s hard to see an end to the chaos.
This Presidents Day also fell during the beginning of the next presidential campaign cycle, with 2020 just around the corner. Dozens of Democrats are jumping in and Trump started his re-election effort.
The 2020 campaign, however, will be different. During this period, the country will vote not just on a president, but on the presidency itself.
What kind of president do we want?
Will gravitas and solemnity return?
Or have we entered an uncharted moment of change for the role?
Can the old norms, the glue between rules and laws that governed behavior in Washington, be resurrected?
These are important questions that might affect exactly what is celebrated on Presidents Day in coming years.
— Newsday
What Trump just did: His declaration of a national emergency must not hold up in court
Look past the disjointed rambling in President Trump’s Rose Garden statement and press conference Friday.
Look past the lies, such as when he insisted again that undocumented immigrants, who are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, threaten the nation’s safety.
And when he said most drugs come through unwalled areas, not ports of entry, contradicting his own Drug Enforcement Administration.
And when he said more people are trying to immigrate illegally than ever before, when border apprehensions have fallen by 80 percent since 2000.
What matters most right now is that Trump just declared a national emergency to override a determination that Congress just made — namely, not to spend billions of public dollars on construction of a border wall.
He now seeks to unilaterally move billions allocated for other purposes to respond to a crisis that by any objective measure is not a crisis.
Congress, especially Republicans who spent years railing against Barack Obama for executive overreaches that look positively shy in comparison, must fight this hard. And the courts — including the five judges who constitute the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — must reject this patent perversion of the balance of power.
— New York Daily News
