Donald Trump is an abnormal president. Mr. Trump lacks any traditional criterion for
the presidency other than being elected by the rules prescribed by Article
II. He is a sexual predator, a serial
liar, proudly ignorant, a bully and a bigot, who surrounds himself with the
worst characters of American constitutional politics. Unlike any other president in American
history, Mr. Trump has no particular commitment to the institutions of
constitutional democracy, broadly defined.
If Ben Carson was arguably a dimension worse than any other aspirant for
the presidency in 2016, Mr. Trump is dimensionally worse than Mr. Carson. Claims that some other president or
presidential aspirant are as unqualified or as bad, while perhaps true
regarding an individual characteristic (Trump may be no dumber than Warren
Harding), are ludicrous in the totality.
Whatever his psychological condition, Mr. Trump is constitutionally
unfit for the White House or any other position in a constitutional democracy.
The Trump presidency is nevertheless the consequence of
normal constitutional politics. Trump
was elected according the constitutional rules.
His candidacy was a product of changes in campaign-finance that have
increasingly facilitated self-financed candidates with limited political histories
as well as celebrities such as Ross Perot and Sarah Palin. The 2016 vote largely mirrored the 2008 and 2012 vote with differences being
as much explained by secular trends in voting choice as particular details of the campaign such as the FBI's intervention. The only major unique event was the
publication of embarrassing documents by Russian hackers, which no doubt played
some role in the election. Still,
evidence suggests that false news and information played a far greater role and
the inability of many voters to make accurate judgments about basic facts seems a consequence of long-term trends in how Americans obtain and
process facts about the political world.
The normal politics that generated an abnormal president highlight
the necessary repairs that must be made to the American constitutional order to
prevent Trumpism. If constitutional
order A in the normal course of operation generates constitutional order B and constitutional
order B is a terrible regime, constitutional order A has severe design flaws
and cannot be restored merely by a temporary expedient that removes a
particular manifestation of political outcome B. Impeaching Trump promises only temporary
relief. If Donald Trump were to
disappear today, the combination of campaign finance laws, media practices,
party politics and sheer bigotry that produced Donald Trump will likely produce
some variation on Donald Trump in the foreseeable future. That is our new normal. Trumpism can be prevented only if fundamental
changes are made to the constitutional order, whether those changes be, as
Sandy Levinson insists, to the constitutional text, or as I believe, to the way
that constitutional politics functions.
Alas, the normal politics that generated an abnormal
president also highlight why very few governing officials have an incentive to
change fundamental features of the constitutional order. The vast majority of powerholders in the United
States are the beneficiaries of this dysfunctional constitutional regime. Donald Trump is good for media profits, which
means Trump or similar are good for a corporate controlled media. Republicans are unlikely to tinker with a
constitutional order in which Republicans control most levers of
government. Republican Senator Shelley
Moore of West Virginia spoke for her party when commenting that most Republicans
like the direction Mr. Trump is taking the country, even as they wish Mr. Trump
would tone down his rhetorical excesses.
Leading Democrats are also unlikely to tinker with a constitutional
order which has contributed to their control of the party. In this constitutional order, after all,
Nancy Pelosi gets to be House Minority Leader and Hillary Clinton almost wins
the presidency. Not bad. In a constitutional order in which Democrats
are the majority party, a fair probability exists that different persons play
prominent leadership roles in that coalition.