Emperor Trump??

It's always entertaining, at least to me, to take note of how a new buzzword or catchphrase propagates, virus-like, through the legacy press. It's almost as if every left-leaning news organization in the country wakes up, reads the NYTimes, and says, "today's password is X." Which may be literally true in some cases.

The newest one, and tell me if you've picked up on this, is that Donald Trump is "dangerous." As in, he's too dangerous to be allowed back into the White House. As in, his existence is a mortal threat to democracy, and he must be stopped at all costs.

If you think to yourself, "wait, the Republic survived his first term, how bad could a second term be," they've got you covered. Apparently, the mere fact that he'd be unburdened by the desire to get re-elected is why he'd turn into some sort of raging dictator. Or, as Michael Goodwin of the NYPost noted in his review of Biden's 1/6 speech, "all Hitler, all the time."

Now, before you Trump skeptics think I've gone soft on the Untethered Orange Id, hear me out. Today's bit isn't about Trump. It's an "as ye sow, so shall ye reap" admonition to the Democrats and the Left.

First, dial the WABAC machine to 1787 or so, when the nation's governing document was ratified. The Constitution set forth a system of government that divided power between a Federal government and the various states. The Federal government was divided into three parts: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The legislative branch was further divided into two houses (note that 60% of the world's nations have unicameral legislatures). States were similarly structured. Beyond this division of power, there is the enumeration of powers - a list of what the government is allowed to do, and an implicit ban on doing anything not specifically allowed. To top it all off, there's the Bill of Rights, which further tells the government "thou shalt not."

So, the system is massively stacked against a rogue dictator, and that's before we get to the power of the legislature to unseat such a dictator via its power of impeachment.

Next, dial the WABAC machine to 2007, when then-candidate Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush's excessive use of executive orders in expanding the President's power. "The President is not above the law," he quipped. That tune changed quite rapidly once his party lost its grip on Congress. First, Ted Kennedy died nine months into Obama's term, kiboshing the Dem's 60 seat supermajority in the Senate. Then, Kennedy was replaced by Republican Scott Brown, cementing the loss of the supermajority and leaving the Dems unable to override Republican filibusters against such things as ObamaCare. Then, in 2010, the Tea Party wave decisively swung the House to the GOP and further eroded the Dems majority in the Senate. Finally, the last straw for Obama: in 2014, his party lost the Senate and went even deeper into the minority in the House.

Obama, while personally successful as President, was an absolute disaster for the Democratic Party. In addition to the wipeouts in Congress (the Senate went from 60-40 to 46-54 and the House went from 255-179 to 188-247), the number of state legislatures controlled by the Dems dropped from 27 to 13 (a loss of 816 legislative seats), and also lost 13 governorships.

A savvy leader would have, at some point in this rolling rout, read the tea leaves and recalibrated. Bill Clinton did so after the Dems got wiped out in 1994. But, Obama's ego would not accept this, and he coughed up one of the great Presidential hairballs of all time.

He declared:

I am going to be working with Congress where I can to accomplish this, but I am also going to act on my own if Congress is deadlocked. I've got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won't, and I've got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission.

The man who ran in part on a promise to rein in executive excess suddenly decided it was a Good Thing. Probably because he, the One, would be its wielder. His sycophants, adulators, and the like latched onto this like lampreys on a shark, and we got all sorts of veiled laments about how much better the country would be if Obama could go it alone.

Flash back to the man that Matt Welch at Reason called "America's worst successful columnist," Thomas Friedman, and his 2010 lament about wanting to be "China for a day."

[W[hat if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment.

Encapsulated there is the tragic arrogance of the Best-and-Brightest. They believe the "right solutions" are hampered only by the messiness of our system and the recalcitrance of those who don't appreciate their best-and-brightestness. This carried forth to endless bemoaning of how stupid Americans were for not giving Obama the free rein he needed to fix the nation.

Those same Best-and-Brightest rediscovered limited government, division of powers, enumerated powers, and checks-and-balances when Trump got elected, no matter that he was actually rather sedate in his Executive Ordering (using it as much, from what I saw, to undo excesses as anything else).

Then, along came Uncle Joe Biden, who promised us a moderate Presidency and a 'return to sanity' or some such folderol, but who has made Obama look like a piker in terms of executive overreach. With Biden came an attitude of "we will do as we wish, good luck stopping us." In a classic "fish rots from the head" way, this has filtered down to the blue states, with governors, attorneys-general, and other officials doing whatever they want.

The Constitution, the laws, and the Supreme Court be damned.

All this sets the stage, at least in their minds, for an existential fear of DJT winning the White House in 2024. If the Presidency is invested with the unlimited power and authority they desire when one of theirs is in it, then it will have the same limitlessness when someone they despise is in it.

With the help of a bleating media, their level of dread has been turned up to eleven. To a point where they don’t even want the nation’s voters to decide. Four in five Democrats want Trump deballotted, the premise of “democracy” notwithstanding.

Are they right? Would Trump 'destroy democracy' in the White House should he win again?

Color me skeptical.

I see the occasional "will Trump refuse to leave the White House after his term ends" question in various places, which is as nonsensical a fear as one can have. Absent a military coup, which would require the entirety of the armed forces ignoring their Constitutional oaths and blindly obeying Trump, his authority to do anything would end on January 20, 2029, and the next President would simply tell White House security to remove him from the building. Beyond that, his tenure would be restricted by both the Congress and the courts, as well as the matter of who would actually agree to work for him, given his absolutely awful track record of disloyalty to anyone who has dared disagree with him.

That last bit is part of why I deeply hope, against all odds, that Republican primary voters pick someone other than Trump to run for the White House. Four more years of Trump won't get us on a path to reconciliation, for another part. He's simply not a uniter. Here is where many will say there's no reconciling with the Left, but I believe that the fraction of Democrats that are leftists looking to undo the nation's principles is relatively small, and if they can be isolated and disempowered, there's a chance the nation can find some peace and unity.

But, as I said, today isn't about Trump. It's about how the Left's embrace of unfettered Presidential authority is the source of their fears of what might happen should a Republican (any Republican, really - the same histrionics will emerge even if Haley or DeSantis or someone else wins) win the White House.

It really shouldn't matter all that much who is President. The job is executive, not legislative, and the real governance of the nation should come from Congress. But, with Congress abandoning its role, both in delegating massive power to the executive branch and in giving up on writing individual laws, the Presidency has grown to outsize importance.

The blame for this lies with those who have condoned Presidential excess when it serves their ends. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.