As we inaugurate a new president and begging a new administration, my regular reminder that the president is not the legislator-in-chief. We have a perfectly capable Congress—indeed a better institution—for that job.
The president’s job is much tougher: governing. 1/
The primary job of the president is to govern. That is, to implement and execute American foreign policy that he is largely responsible for designing, and to use executive discretion to sensibly administer domestic policy set in broad strokes by Congress.
Of course POTUS is involved in designing the domestic policy. He has both the veto and a strong position from which to be a leader.
But executives aren’t vital to legislating. They are absolutely vital to governing, from crisis scenarios to mundane policy execution.
Laws are inherently inexact; all Congress can do is set broad policy. It’s up to the administration to plan, prepare, and execute the details of those laws. This is hard! And bad execution of the law means bad government.
IMO, the Trump administration was a failure in many ways, but most importantly it was a failure of governance. And particularly crisis governance. Trump lacked the leadership, either policy or political, to arrive at good policies acceptable to the public.
I will be often be a critic of the Biden administration on his domestic policy positions on various legislative proposals, as I was with Trump.
But, as always, I will be more concerned with his foreign policy, his domestic governance, and his policy and political leadership.
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A bunch of different people have brought up family Bibles today, so here are some pics I just had my mom take of ours, including birth records back to the 1860s, and a temperance pledge page!
These pics don’t really capture the heft of that beast. It’s probably 9x12 inches, and it easily weighs 10 pounds.
Not sure what year it was produced, it’s clearly from my mom’s maternal grandmother’s family (Dum), my great-grandmother is Mary Elizabeth Dum, born 1883 as listed on the births page.
This isn’t that surprising. The Trump rallies are unified around Trump, and he quite obviously gave up last week. No one wants to stand around protesting in the cold for no discernible reason. Loud voices on the internet do not automatically translate into well-attended rallies.
There are only two regular events that bring the whole of the United States government together, the annual State of the Union Address, and the quadrennial inauguration. They are very different events, and reflect very different qualities of our Constitutional system.
I’ve written at length about the State of the Union, and how it is the singular event that most reflects the intentions of the Constitution: the president, coming to the Capitol, to ask the representatives of the people to enact laws he thinks are good.
The quadrennial inauguration is different. In some ways, it’s *not* reflective of our constitution; at times, it can feel more like a coronation of a monarch than any feature of a republic.
Trump’s continued refusal to address the riot is itself a damning indictment of his fitness for office. Any other POTUS of our lifetime would have by now visited the Capitol, spoke publicly many times, and proposed policy changes to address the problems.
You know, been a leader.
People just accept this from Trump, because it’s been four years of totally abysmal policy leadership and public leadership. It was the exact same with COVID. He can’t empathize. He won’t make tough policy choices. And he can’t build support for policy decisions. He won’t lead.
Note that a privileged resolution for impeachment could be brought to the floor immediately—no judiciary committee or rules committee—as a Question of Privilege, and the PQ could be ordered at the end of an hour of debate and then the resolution voted on. It can be *very* quick.
Here’s an old blog post I did about moving impeachment via a Question of Privilege.
No impeachment has ever succeeded on the floor via a Question of Privilege. Lots of them are brought, because it’s one of the few ways individual Members can unilaterally set the floor agenda. Leadership can’t stop them.
I don’t believe this is correct. Rule I, clause 12(e) was added in the 114th Congress, and specifically allows the Speaker, after “consultation” with the minority leader, to unilaterally break an adjournment and reconvene when in the public interest. (Citations in next tweet).
Now, you still need to get a quorum back to DC. Until you do that, you definitely will need unanimous consent to do anything, because if you don’t have UC, anyone could object to the lack of a quorum.
But in terms of moving up the time to reconvene, Pelosi has that authority.