Column: Trump’s presidency convinced Washington it needed reforms on executive power. But it never happened, writes michaelschaffer
, a volume of proposals designed to protect the nation from future rogue chief executives.
In fact, the premise of the book, and the broader conversation, was that it would be acted on in some future America, either 2021 or 2025, that had definitely turned the page from the 45th president — a country in the mood for a 21st-century update of the post-Watergate reforms that had aimed to Nixon-proof the presidency.
And there’s no reason to doubt Trump will make the most of that lack of limitations. “If he runs and wins after his performance in office in his first term, and after what it clearly appears that he’s running on, which is a platform meant to include pledges to break norms — he can claim that the American people have approved, that his agenda is to rethink the executive branch, the nature of the presidency and the civil service, the deep state,” Goldsmith told me.
Soren Dayton, the director of governance at the Niskanen Center think tank, wondered aloud this week whether the decision to go all-in on investigating the history of Jan. 6 made it harder to legislate a less dramatic set of rules erecting constraints on future chief executives. People who study good government for a living may be able to tell the difference between the apolitical reforms like much of the Protect Our Democracy Act and more divisive endeavors like the efforts to push back against GOP-led voting restrictions. But when they’re cheek by jowl in the news cycle, it’s hard for civilians — or GOP pols afraid of a primary challenge — to tell them apart.
Bassin, a former Obama administration official who founded Protect Democracy in 2016, says the willingness to let reform slip down the list of priorities might also connect to a particular pathology in the capital, one that makes it harder for people to conjure worst-case scenarios.
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