A Sense of Doubt blog post #3620 - Governing? Not so Much - All Pugilism, No Policy

Republican lawmakers applaud after the certification of President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in Washington on Jan. 6. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3260 - Governing? Not so Much - All Pugilism, No Policy


What do you see in the picture above?

Nearly all men. Two women. A couple of men of color. Mostly white, old men,

That's our government.

Old, white men.

I am an old white man, too, but that doesn't mean I want to be governed by a bunch of old, white men.

And yes, I read the New York Times. In fact, given Bezos' behaviour, I may drop the Washington Post if there's too much more chicanery.

Just a share today.

Steered clear of politics for a while.

Figured it was time for something political.

This article resonated with me.

Thanks for tuning in.

George F. Will

Republicans, enjoy ineffectual control of Congress while you have it

With Congress ceding so much power to presidents, Trump, not GOP lawmakers, is where the action is.

January 10, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/10/republicans-trump-senate-house/



In the 1850s, as disunion loomed and tempers frayed, so many members of Congress carried weapons into the legislature that a senator said, “The only persons who don’t have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers.” (From Robert W. Merry’s “Decade of Disunion.”) Today’s congressional hostilities are less potentially lethal, perhaps because the stakes in Congress are low: Much of the disputing is purely performative because Congress lacks power. It has, lackadaisically or prudentially (to avoid controversial decisions), sloughed off many responsibilities by vast grants of discretion to the president.

How are you coping with the stress of life during today’s 43 “emergencies”? That’s how many of the 79 declared by executive orders or proclamations since 1979 are still extant. Several statutes empower the president to declare emergencies, thereby acquiring (by the count of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school) more than 130 standby statutory powers. The Cato Institute’s Gene Healy, in 2024 Senate testimony, said a 1934 law empowers the president to seize or close “any facility or station for wire communication” once he proclaims a threat of war. This, Healy said, is “a potential internet ‘kill switch.’”

In 2019, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to fund, with money appropriated for other purposes, a project (the border wall) Congress had explicitly refused to fund. What fun. And so, three years later, President Joe Biden tried to use an emergency proclamation to cancel $400 billion in student loan debt. The Supreme Court, not Congress, thwarted this. (Sort of: “The Supreme Court blocked me from relieving student debt,” Biden said, “but they didn’t stop me.”)

The incoming president will be able, on a whim, to unilaterally discombobulate international commerce — and the domestic economy — with tariffs. Congress has lost interest in exercising its constitutionally enumerated power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

Because of such self-diminishing actions by many previous Congresses, the new one is less central to American governance than any of its 118 predecessors. In his 2009 book, “Madison’s Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy,” Peter M. Shane, a constitutional and administrative law scholar at Ohio State University, wrote: “Adopted as an ethos of government, aggressive presidentialism breeds an insularity, defensiveness, and even arrogance within the executive branch that undermines sound decision making, discounts the rule of law, and attenuates the role of authentic deliberation in shaping political outcomes.”

Healy thinks all powers conferred by presidential emergency declarations should expire “in a matter of weeks” unless approved by Congress via joint resolutions. Congress might, however, be aghast at being compelled into such complicity in governing.

Under today’s presidentialism ethos, the president, not Congress, is supposed to set the nation’s agenda and dominate its political conversation. And congressional members of the president’s party are expected to be almost completely compliant. Times have changed.

When Abraham Lincoln asked Congress to promptly pass a banking reform bill, this presidential intervention in the legislative process “was considered practically a violation of Church and State. The New York Times labeled it ‘extraordinary’ and ‘injudicious.’” (From Roger Lowenstein’s “Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War.”)

Presidentialism raises the stakes, and hence the temperature, of presidential politics, making every election The Most Important In History. Healy notes that in 2000, only 45 percent of Americans told pollsters that they thought it mattered greatly who won that year’s election. By 2012, 63 percent did; by 2016, 74 percent; by 2020, 83 percent.

This, in turn, produces what Trump especially, but not only he, exemplifies: the politics of catharsis. In the spring 2023 National Affairs, Mikael Good, a Georgetown University student, and Philip Wallach of the American Enterprise Institute wrote: Out is the politics of deliberation and accommodation of competing interests; in is “news-cycle combat,” which “is all about displaying bravado by throwing punches. If the point is to help your supporters feel something right now, most constitutional tools are insufficiently instant.”

Republicans should savor today’s perishable instant. Between 1900 and 1968, according to Claremont Review of Books senior editor William Voegeli, for 54 of the 68 years, one party or the other controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. In the 56 years between 1968 and 2024, there has been divided government for 40 years. In the nine presidential elections beginning in 1992, Democrats have won control of the presidency and both houses of Congress three times (1992, 2008, 2020), Republicans four times (2000, 2004, 2016, 2024). None of these seven unified governments survived into a third year.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2501.15 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3484 days ago & DAD = 140 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.