The Awkward Question of What Trump's Staff Should Be Doing

The shocking-but-not-surprising revelations that people around Trump are thwarting some of his worst impulses raises two serious problems.

One is problem of unelected staffers and bureaucrats thwarting a duly elected President.  To the extent that the bureaucracy upholds the rule of law against Trump's worst impulses, we should certainly applaud it.  But most of the thwarting appears to be taking place either within the realm of foreign policy, where the President's discretionary authority is extremely broad, or in foreign trade, where the law has foolishly delegated way more power to the President than it ought.  This also means, by the way, that electing a Democratic Congress will not make that much difference.  Congress has quite limited power to restrain the President in matters of foreign policy.  And although Congress could hypothetically pass legislation to take back its power on trade, any such law would require enough Republican votes to pass over Trump's veto.

The other problem it raises is the whole the anti-Trump paradox.  Staffers, bureaucrats, and members of Congress of both parties, as well as political activists, very properly want to avoid the sort of catastrophes portrayed in "But her emails."  The best way to keep Trump from breaking free from his minders and causing -- well, maybe we shouldn't think too much about it -- is to remove him in one of the two ways allowed by law -- either by impeachment or by finding him unfit to hold office under the 25th Amendment.

Impeachment requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives and a 2/3 vote in the Senate.  The 25th Amendment requires a majority of the Cabinet and 2/3 of both houses of Congress to vote that the President is incapable of carrying out his duties.  These are high hurdles to meet, incapacity even higher than impeachment, and rightly so.  The will of the people should not be lightly overturned

The will of the people is precisely what is at stake.  The President is impeachable for "Bribery, Treason and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."  "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" is a vague formulation.  For all intents and purposes, an impeachable offense is whatever public opinion says it is.  And "public opinion" does not mean 50% plus one.  It means a very strong consensus in favor of impeachment.  The Zero Percent Approval Rating is not a thing in real life, but by the time Nixon was impeached, his approval rating was at 24%.  It will not be possible to remove Trump from office without significant Republican cooperation.  That is not going to happen until a significant portion of the Republican public turns against him.  In these highly polarized times, Donald Trump could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and most Republicans would not consider it an impeachable offense.

The only thing that could bring Trump's approval rating into impeachment-grade territory is if he actually harms his loyal followers.  Unfortunately, there is no way for him to do that without harming a great many innocent bystanders in the process.  This commentator makes something like that point:

[A]re senior officials who steal memos and thwart orders from the president actually doing more harm than good by screening the ‘real’ Trump from the democracy that has to live with its choices, and choose again in two years?

Two responses illustrated the dilemma well.  One answered:  "Yes. Same as enablers of alcoholics who keep them from facing natural consequences until a catastrophe happens."  To which another replied, "There's a difference between someone who shields an alcoholic from embarrassment or ridicule, Verses someone with the good sense to hide the keys to the car."

I would agree.  You hope that alcoholics facing the consequences of their drinking will finally decide to quit.  If the alcoholic causes an accident and is killed, all such hope vanishes.  And, worse, yet, the alcoholic is risking not only his or her own life by driving drunk, but the lives of innocent bystanders.

So, what price respecting the will of the people in choosing their duly elected leader?  And what price in allowing the leader to show himself for what he is and prove the need to get rid of him? I am not talking now about Congress declining to pass his agenda, bureaucracies in following the law instead of his whims, or courts striking down illegal actions.  I am talking about top-ranking staffers illegally thwarting the lawful actions of a duly elected President.

Well, looking at the actions that we now know about:

• Withdrawing from NAFTA, which could spark a diplomatic and economic crisis.  I would say let him proceed.  An economic crisis, quite unnecessarily created, is just what is needed to get the attention of Trump's followers.  I am confident that any economic and diplomatic crisis created would be recoverable.  Granted, a lot of innocent Canadians and Mexicans would suffer, but this is the sort of lesser crisis I would be willing to tolerate now to avoid a worse crisis in the future.
• Trade war with China.  Let him proceed.  We are there already.  It is not creating a crisis, but is causing problems.  Let them get worse.
• Invading Venezuela.  I do not have a clear sense of how this would end up.  Would there be Iraqi-style resistance, or merely a godawful mess that was now our responsibility, and with the least competent administration ever in charge?  On the one hand, my guess is the damage would be limited by Trump getting bored and soon leaving.  On the other hand, I suspect this would be the sort of thing that causes serious damage to the invaded country but not much at home.  Is that a good reason to approve or disapprove?
• Cutting off aid to Pakistan.  I don't know enough to have an opinion here.
• Withdrawing from the free trade pact with South Korea and/or withdrawing our troops.  There was an excellent explanation of why this is a serious threat to national security, and why preventing it was such a high priority.
• Large-scale intervention in Syria.  I plan to do a whole post on this.
• Preventive war against North Korea.  Yikes! Absolutely, I am in favor of staff intervening with our President to stop this.  I don't care about legal nicities here; I just want to avoid nuclear war.

And one final thought.  Some might ask, is it worth removing Trump from office if Mike Pence will take his place.  I would say, see all the things staffers have kept Trump from doing you will see the answer is hell, yes!  I don't like Mike Pence's politics and would expect to oppose almost anything he would want to do as President.  But at least there would be no need to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth and lock him up in the closet.