Trump Tells Governors to ‘Call Your Own Shots’ on When to Reopen
President Backs Down From Confrontation
Presented with a genuine crisis and with it a perfect opportunity to seize power, Trump punts. He wants to avoid responsibility, not rule.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
A Note for People who Think Trump Wants to be Dictator
The Times headline at 6:00 PM:
Presented with a genuine crisis and with it a perfect opportunity to seize power, Trump punts. He wants to avoid responsibility, not rule.
Presented with a genuine crisis and with it a perfect opportunity to seize power, Trump punts. He wants to avoid responsibility, not rule.
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10 comments:
I'm puzzled why that means avoiding responsibility. I thought it was a good call, given that the spread and concentration of the disease seems very much related to international travel hubs, urban density, and climate. Which vary a lot over a huge country.
@JustPeachy
It's avoiding responsibility because it is passing the buck. If some foolish governor rashly decides to end lockdown way too early and gets a bunch of people killed in the process, Trump can just shrug and say "Hey, that's not my fault! It wasn't my decision, so you can't hold me responsible!", even though he had the power to try to stop any such thing from happening.
Your doctor has an obligation to try to stop you from making poor decisions that they know will hurt you. They don't get to say, "Go ahead and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day if you want! It's your decision!". And if they did, they'd be avoiding the responsibility of their position and betraying their profession!
The President also has an obligation to try to step in and stop state officials from making poor decisions that they know will hurt people. The President doesn't get to say, "Go ahead and lift quarantine if you want! It's your decision!". Because it's their duty as president that they serve the good of the entire nation, and standing by and allowing one of our more foolish or unfit governors to make an ignorant decision which will result in the deaths of American citizens is unconscionable.
@JustPeachy - yes, Trump might have made the right decision, and it is certainly defensible. My point was that Trump is not using a crisis to seize more power for himself, which is page 1 on the playbook of any actual dictator.
The key is that he did make a claim to absolute authority, and then backed down after 24hrs of relatively mild opposition (lots of people saying, "no you don't"; but what would that be to Putin?).
I think it was Ross Douthat who described Trump as an "authoritarian weakman." That's as good a description as I've seen. He has certainly been dismayed to find that, as president, his power is not absolute. He'd definitely like a lot more power and fantasizes that he is the kind of guy who could grab it for himself. He also often tries for it; but he always backs down in the face of opposition.
In other words, it's not that he doesn't want to rule or use the crisis to seize power for himself, it's that he doesn't have the guts or cunning to do so in the way that, for better or worse, someone like Putin obviously does. And he obviously doesn't have any idea how to *govern* like a real, constitutional president of the United States.
That said, I fear that, in the face of a narrow election defeat--that is, that blow to his vanity--he might find some measure of the guts to really try.
@John-- true. The wannabe dictator claims confuse me, too. I just don't see it.
I'm baffled that there are so many people who seem totally convinced that the guy *wants* to be some kind of evil-dictator-for-life, but the big plan for countering that was "impeach him on anything we can dig up or manufacture". Because, you know, that worked so well with Bill Clinton (and if you don't see the parallel, you weren't paying attention in the 90s-- the current left hysteria looks identical, but with the party affiliations reversed).
I had some real hope for about five minutes there, that maybe the left and right were finally ready to sit down and have a constructive discussion about executive overreach, and limiting executive power. (shrugs) Too optimistic, I guess.
@JustPeachy
As my post indicates, I think he would like absolute power, but is too weak characterologically to achieve it. I think he imagined it was simply part of being president, and has been bitterly disappointed that it is not. He certainly has many times made claims to be above the law and to be able to do "whatever I want."
@David: He strikes me as mostly bluster and hot air. He lacks the drive and fanaticism for dictator-hood. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised when he makes a decent decision. I'm pretty sure the country will survive him.
But I'm concerned about the next president. And the one after that. A bad apple in office is totally inevitable. That's what all the annoying checks-and-balances stuff was about, that we've been inexorably eroding, in order to "get stuff done". I wish that all the people who are so frightened of Trump would wake up and realize that NOW would be a great time to scale back the president's powers. You could probably even get some of the more liberty-minded Republicans on board (but no, they have conservative cooties). But instead they've wasted all their energy on prying him out of office. Now they can't even come up with a decent candidate to run against him. It's really disheartening :(
@JustPeachy
"I'm baffled that there are so many people who seem totally convinced that the guy *wants* to be some kind of evil-dictator-for-life, but the big plan for countering that was "impeach him on anything we can dig up or manufacture". Because, you know, that worked so well with Bill Clinton (and if you don't see the parallel, you weren't paying attention in the 90s-- the current left hysteria looks identical, but with the party affiliations reversed)."
Dig up or manufacture? Are you willfully ignoring reality or just not paying attention? He is blatantly, demonstrably guilty of very serious criminal acts!
The Mueller Report made it crystal clear that he broke the law, no doubts of any kind. It then fell to Congress to impeach him for his crimes, which is what happened - except the Senate is in charge of the actual trial, and the GOP is in control of the Senate, and so they refused to call witnesses or accept any actual testimony, and just dismissed the case without a real hearing.
It was the most shockingly baldfaced and shameless kangaroo court, and the idea that you could possibly think otherwise frankly stuns me.
Have you seen his lattest tweets? Liberte Minnesota and defend the 2nd ammendment... I dont live in the USA, but ....
N13
Is Biden hermetically sealed in a bubble in a room below his basement?
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