Taming the Presidency after Donald Trump

Trump purged inspectors general and removed an F.B.I. director, brushing aside protections Congress established in law for their independence. He installed loyalists in acting positions, flouting the Senate’s confirmation process, and weakened protections for career professionals. He defied Congress’s power of the purse and its oversight authority.

Trump’s onslaught on the legislature exposed serious weaknesses in previous efforts to counter the rise of the presidency. But the responses that come most readily to mind are likely to prove ineffective. Congress will have to reach deeper into its tool kit if it is to reclaim its voice. The best option would be for Congress to assert its capacity to engage the president and the executive branch in ways that foster cooperation in issues of governance.

With President Biden now in the White House, Congress might be tempted to duck the problem. He has promised to restrain himself and respect the norms that Congress expects presidents to uphold. But that would be a mistake: Looking to Biden for relief from Trump’s transgressions still leaves the potential for abuse in place for a future president — and it also leaves the potential in place for Biden himself, if he so chooses that path even occasionally. If Trump taught us anything, it is that presidents are not dependable arbiters of best practices. It shouldn’t be up to them to decide for themselves whether to respect prosecutorial independence or listen to the experts. A second option is for Congress to try to restrain the presidency proactively. Legislators could, for instance, bolster the independence of inspectors general. They could threaten with the power of the purse.

But Congress has tried pushback like that before. In the 1970s, legislators reacted to the abuses of the Nixon administration with a robust assertion of Congress’s constitutional muscle. The upshot, paradoxically, was that presidents doubled down on the separation of powers. They insisted on their singular hold over the executive power, stiffened White House control over administrative agencies and resisted congressional oversight as Trump did in defiance of congressional subpoenas. Institutional combat doesn’t play to Congress’s strengths. Congress has been far more effective when it adopted a third option: finding creative ways that made it a win-win for the executive and legislative branches to work together and that stressed the integration of the three branches rather than their separation.

Consider a few examples from the first half of the 20th century. When Congress wanted to gain a firmer grip on government spending, it enlisted the presidency as a partner. In 1921, legislators required the president to propose an annual budget, created a new budget bureau to ensure that the president’s recommendations were backed by expertise and established an independent office to keep track of expenditures. When, in the late 1930s, the president asked for power to reorganise the agencies of the executive branch, Congress devised a new cooperative arrangement. The president’s reorganization plans would be privileged, but legislators could veto them.

In these initiatives, Congress insisted on being more than just a watchdog or simply countering the president’s claims to control. Instead, it reworked institutional relationships, recruiting the presidency as a partner in new cooperative enterprises. By turning administration — the day-to-day business of governing — into an arena of mutual engagement, both of the political branches became more powerful. Congress secured its interests by encouraging presidents to serve purposes larger than their own.

The writers are journalists with NYT©2020