Talking Trump Presidency

He's already giving orders to Senate Republicans. How do we even talk about that?

So I want to talk about the incoming administration, but….

Here’s the thing. Donald Trump tweeted out instructions to the Senate over the weekend. They are to confirm all his executive branch nominees quickly, and also to block confirmation of Joe Biden’s judicial nominees during the upcoming lame duck session, when Democrats will still hold the Senate majority.¹

The problem? I know how to talk about this kind of thing in a normal presidency. We don’t know, however, to what extent this will be a normal presidency. Trump said something about recess appointments, for example, but the Supreme Court has made those a lot harder to do — would the incoming Senate simply recess for two weeks so that Trump could fill up his cabinet with recess appointments? Would Trump just recess-appoint everyone during a normal weekend break despite what the Court ruled and dare anyone to challenge him? Would he ask the Justice Department to harass, or even indict anyone who made that challenge? Would anyone try to stop that?

And etc. etc. etc. This isn’t crazy paranoid speculation; this is basically taking what Trump and many of his allies have said during the campaign seriously.

But at the same time these are questions, not certainty. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say that executive branch nominations and confirmations will look more or less as they have for the last eight years. Non-controversial (according to the out-party) cabinet and maybe a few other top nominations will be confirmed quickly. Then the blanket filibuster will kick in, forcing the majority to prioritize and to spend way too much Senate floor time on confirmations, which will take way too long. Trump will throw some tantrums about it from time to time, but his attention will wander, and not much will change. Oh, and some of the nominees will be so unpopular that even a 53-47 Republican majority won’t have the votes to confirm and they will withdraw before they reach the floor.

Or maybe not! The key to having a president who doesn’t believe in the rule of law — and one empowered by immunity granted by the Supreme Court despite the words and the theory and the history of the Constitution — is we just don’t know what might happen. How bad it might get. How much the structure of the US government has, and will, change.

Which is of course very bad for the Republic, but it’s also a mess for my ability to help y’all understand how things work.

Normally — if this was 2017 — I’d point out that the Constitution and US political institutions work strongly against any attempt to rule by decree. In fact, I’m quite confident that’s still true. But Trump has already demonstrated that he wants to do it anyway; indeed, he seems to believe that’s what presidents normally do, and resistance to his edicts is personal. Normal presidents test the limits of the office all the time, but then they retreat when rebuffed. Trump gets rolled all time and I don’t expect that to change, but when he notices it he usually charges ahead, regardless of the damage.

In his first time, that was usually costly to him (and to his party, and to the nation; attempted rule by command is really bad!) Now? I’m not sure we can count on how it plays out. Again, we just don’t know. Oh, it will still be bad in many ways. Just maybe not the ways it usually is.

And then there’s another problem for your friendly neighborhood blogger.² In this particular case, my position has been and continues to be that blanket filibusters of executive branch (and judicial) nominees are bad for everyone, and that the Senate majority should adopt new procedures to defeat it. I’ll stick to that position now, but it’s fair to question whether it’s appropriate to applaud any expansion of presidential influence for a chief executive dedicating to abusing the office. It’s…complicated. After all, I’ve argued that fixing the nominations process would be good for the Senate, too.

Recess appointments, though? That’s clown-show stuff. Granted, I think the Supreme Court was wrong and I think the occasional recess appointment is just fine. But using it as a first choice across the board? Clown stuff.

As for Trump’s other point about Biden’s judicial nominations? Well, that’s an easy one. Republicans are already doing what they can to block those confirmations, but until January 3 they simply don’t have the votes to stop them, and I do think Democrats in the Senate will make it a priority to confirm all they can.

At any rate, these questions about normal presidency vs. Trump presidency are going to come up all the time. Unless Trump actually behaves himself, which isn’t going to happen. Or if Trump is able to rule by edict, in which case, well, so much for the Republic. But if it’s somewhere in between, then I suppose I’ll just have to find some pithy way of saying that I’m talking about how things would happen under the US Constitutional system, which may or may not apply to this particular case.

I wish I had better news.

1. Terminology footnote one: Since the site formerly known as Twitter has abandoned it, I see no reason we shouldn’t adopt “tweet” as a generic term for posting to microblogging social media sites. And similarly for the noun and other forms.

2. Terminology footnote two: Newsletterer? I’m happy to be a blogger. Although how I write here is a lot more like columns than my old blog posts. Except that, alas, the typos and other writing flaws from Plain Blog are no doubt all back. My apologies for that.