The law of unintended consequences - political edition

 

The Telegraph in London has an interesting perspective on how President Trump is using the Democratic Party's own weapons against it (article may be paywalled).

Democrats created all the tools Trump is using to attack official Washington. Oops. They hoped to centralise power in the presidency and break through the old limitations of the 1787 Constitution. They largely succeeded after decades of effort.

What the authors of this transformation never expected was a president who would use the great powers they handed him to dismantle their own cherished projects. Yet that is exactly what Trump is doing.

This political ju-jitsu puts Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and their friends in a very awkward position. They grab the bullhorn to scream “no one elected Musk”. They’re right, of course. But then no one elected the bureaucrats they are defending, and they are far more insulated from control by elected officials.

. . .

The irony is unmistakable. Trump is using the powers of a strong White House to attack the administrative architecture built so laboriously by Democrats. Their progressive agenda is captured by the phrase “Living Constitution,” and was first articulated by Prof Woodrow Wilson (before he became president) and Herbert Croly. It began, in practice, in 1937, when the Supreme Court buckled to Franklin Roosevelt’s pressure and ruled that his new agencies and their regulatory actions were constitutional. Until then, the Court had ruled the other way.

After that, the largest steps were taken by Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society programme created Washington’s complex array of bureaucracies. Barack Obama put the capstone in place with his healthcare legislation, a Democratic goal since Harry Truman.

These cumulative efforts shifted power away from the states and, within Washington, from Congress to the president and a proliferating array of Executive Branch agencies. The president could then govern by executive orders and regulatory actions by those agencies. Although Congress still passed laws, its principal role was reduced to overseeing those agencies (poorly) and approving engorged, consolidated budgets.

Only recently has this trajectory begun to change. That change is the core of the fight in Washington now. A more conservative Supreme Court has begun setting more stringent limits on bureaucratic discretion, both by eliminating deference to agency decisions and by requiring Congressional authorisation for major rules. Trump is acting along parallel lines. Together, these actions by the Supreme Court and a populist president are attempting to alter the long arc of a government that is increasingly centralised, intrusive, and bureaucratic.

The irony is that Trump and his team can take these giant steps, often unilaterally, only because they have grasped the tools created by Democrats and progressive advocates. Trump is using those tools in ways their architects never anticipated. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” as Monty Python said. Now, the Grand Inquisitor has arrived, wielding the very weapons Democrats gave him.

There's more at the link.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" . . . and I never thought to see that phrase used to describe an American President!

Peter