Trump is unrestrained

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
          James Madison, Federalist No. 51 

"Use it or lose it."
           Health advice

Trump can govern without restraint.

All presidents push against the limits of their power, but what is happening this year isn't normal. Trump isn't bothering with hypocrisy.  He doesn't need to bother. Congress is consenting to its irrelevancy.

The 1994 election brought a red wave, elevating a new House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, with a big Republican majority. President Bill Clinton had to say: 

I am relevant. The Constitution gives me relevance. A president, especially an activist president, has relevance.

The tables have turned. Now someone may declare that Congress is relevant, but it is a wish, not a description. At key points Congress has itself proven its irrelevancy. 

     -- Trump ignores Congress' role in the Constitutional scheme. Trump uses implausible of pretexts or doesn't even bother with that. This week he invaded Venezuela. The U.S. used warships, warplanes, and uniformed soldiers with guns. They attacked and destroyed military targets and killed Venezuelan soldiers. Trump declared who would then be the government of Venezuela. The implausible pretext is that this was simply an arrest, a law enforcement action. 

     -- Trump imposed tariffs, a tax. Congress has the power to levy taxes. Trump has an implausible pretext: We are in a trade crisis requiring emergency powers. 

     -- Trump deported people and sent them to third-country prisons. His implausible pretext is that the deported people are enemy invaders subject to the War Powers Act.

     -- Trump shut down USAID, a program authorized by Congress. There was no pretext. He just did it. 

     -- Trump ignored Civil Service laws passed by Congress. Again, no pretext here. He just did it.

There was a key moment when Congress had the power to assert its relevance. It failed to do so. In the aftermath of the January 6 riot, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted against conviction in the impeachment of President Trump. He led a majority of his GOP delegation to do the same. It was a turning point. Memories of the riot were fresh. There was little illusion that President Trump and the rioters were casual tourists and patriots. Trump had not yet sold that story. 

McConnell spoke on the Senate floor to explain his thinking:

American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.

They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he'd lost an election.

Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

The House accused the former president of, quote, "incitement." That is a specific term from the criminal law.

Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.

And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

McConnell went on to say that since his disgrace was so obvious, there was no need to convict him. He was already out of office. 

This was a giant mis-calculation. Trump retained the largest megaphone on planet earth, and he was willing and able to create a new account of the events, an account that was pleasant for Republican voters to hear. Don't believe your eyes. Maybe those people with Trump signs hated Trump. Maybe they were all FBI agents. Meanwhile, this Supreme Court decided that a president -- or at least this president -- had blanket immunities and was not restrained by law. Therefore, the only practical way to force a president to obey the laws and Constitution is to impeach and convict him first. That is the final bottom-line restraint: the inability to keep the support of at least 34 members of one's party.

That is current state of checks and balances: the 34 senators test. 

A normal president might show some restraint. He would care about a legacy of patriotism and virtue. They accept the norms of good behavior. But Trump is uniquely ambitious, uniquely willful, uniquely shameless, and he seeks the legacy of glory. The only real restraint on Trump is the popular will. For now at least, Republican voters appear to like a president who demonstrates strength, not prudence. They want greatness. And greatness means being a conqueror, with all the risks that entails.

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