Alarmism can have many parents. Sometimes, it is conceived by perceptive insight wed to a legitimate concern. Other times, it is a child bred by the marriage of ignorance and bias.
Recently, the media has sounded an alarm that a potential second term for Donald Trump would quickly descend into despotism. Trump playfully fueled this fear when he recently said he would act as a “dictator” on “Day 1” and then not do so after that point.
This fear mostly comes from ignorance and bias. Thinking the former president can install a tyranny likely overstates his abilities. But the particular reforms proposed by those around him show the accusation’s weakness.
These reforms seek to give the president greater control over bureaucratic agencies through proposals like making it easier to fire bureaucrats who refuse to obey presidential directives or who just slow-walk them to undermine their implementation.
Those treating these critiques and reforms as originating with Trump have failed to pay attention to the conservative movement. Criticisms of the “Administrative State” have been leveled by the Right for decades, taking special prominence in the late 2000s and into the 2010s. They do not originate from Trump, and they not come not from a personality cult whose only desire is to empower him.
These criticisms, moreover, have a strong basis in fact. Our system of bureaucratic government contradicts our constitutional structure in two ways.
First, the bureaucratic system violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. The French political thinker Montesquieu argued that political power could be classified into three functions: lawmaking (legislative), law enforcing (executive), and adjudicating legal disputes (judicial). The Founders, agreeing with Montesquieu, created distinct institutions fitted to exercise each power. Doing so was intended to make government less prone to abuse since branches could check each other’s encroachments. The system also sought to create better quality, as each institution acted according to its design to operate effectively.
By contrast, our bureaucratic agencies consolidate all three powers into the same institutions, even the same persons. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency write regulations that hold the force of law. They have officials who go out across the country enforcing those regulations. They even have their own administrative law judges who adjudicate disputes between persons or businesses and the agencies in which they are housed. James Madison would call such set-ups the very definition of tyranny. But it also has proven deeply inefficient, with agencies often inept and bumbling in their administrative actions.
The other way bureaucratic government undermines our constitutional structure is by undermining our republican form of government. Every political system has a sovereign, some person or persons who hold the ultimate ruling authority. For some, that ruler is one king, while for others, it is a small group of aristocrats. In our system, the people as a whole rule. They do so through elected officeholders, especially the president and members of Congress. All legitimate exertions of political will must originate from them, either through the Constitution itself or actions taken by those representing them in the government.
The Administrative State claims to take its cues from the people. Its bureaucrats point to congressional statutes or presidential directives enabling their actions. However, these laws and orders rarely give more than the most vague, generalized guidance. The agencies tend to make real policy and principled decisions independently. When they get clear orders from Congress or the president, they often ignore or willfully misinterpret them. This all results in the will of the people being ignored or even contradicted on many counts. It risks replacing our popular government with an aristocracy of administrators.
Many of the concrete proposals for a new Trump—or really any new Republican administration — will seek to push back toward our constitutional system by reforming its bureaucratic competitor. Does that mean there won’t be overreach by President Trump? No. Presidents themselves often try to usurp the powers of other branches, especially the legislative. However, unlike our modern, superimposed administrative State, our constitutional system has the checks to push against that.
Let’s not fall for false alarmism. Instead, let’s assess presidential candidates on the level of their policies and whether those policies conform to our system of constitutional government.
via spectator