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TRUMP AND THE US PRESIDENCY: THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICA’S HIGHEST OFFICE

Charles EdelFebruary 2018

The Alliance 21 Program is a multi-year research initiative that examines the historically strong Australia-United States relationship and works to address the challenges and opportunities ahead as the alliance evolves in a changing Asia. Based within the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, the Program was launched by the Prime Minister of Australia in 2011 as a public-private partnership to develop new insights and policy ideas.

The Australian Government and corporate partners Boral, Dow, News Corp Australia, and Northrop Grumman Australia support the program’s second phase, which commenced in July 2015 and is focused on the following core research areas: defence and security; resource sustainability; alliance systems in Asia; and trade, investment, and business innovation.

The Alliance 21 Program receives funding support from the following partners. Research conclusions are derived independently and authors represent their own view not those of the United States Studies Centre.

United States Studies Centre

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Reports published by the United States Studies Centre are anonymously peer-reviewed by both internal and external experts.Cover photo: East Room of the White House (Getty)Contents page image: ‘Washington crossing the Delaware’ oil on canvas painted by Emanuel Leutze (Getty)

Table of contents

Executive summary and key judgements 01

Introduction 02

Presidential power: A short history 03

The extent, and limit, of presidential power 07

The Trump stress test 11

Implications 17

Conclusion 19

Endnotes 20

About the author 24

This report may be cited as:Charles Edel, “Trump and the US presidency: The past, present and future of America’s highest office,” United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, February 2018.

UNITED STATES STUDIES CENTRETRUMP AND THE US PRESIDENCY: THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICA’S HIGHEST OFFICE

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Executive summary While media attention remains fixed on Donald Trump, focusing too intently on the president

obscures the profound role played by the institution of the presidency and the stress test it faces.

The presidency was constitutionally created to be empowered, but is restrained by the legislative and judicial branches of government. It has accumulated greater powers over time, but institutional and normative checks have remained in place.

Five factors determine the outward limits of a president’s power within this constitutional framework: the circumstances in which they came into and occupy office; the president’s political standing and popularity; the degree of friction between the different branches of government and between the states and national government; the president’s ability to control the bureaucracy; and the president himself.

How these factors interact determines the shape and the impact of a president’s term.

Key judgements Donald Trump’s ability to reshape the office, probe the boundaries of American political discourse

and transform America’s place in the world will be a product not just of his will, but also of the effectiveness of institutional constraints on presidential power.

One year into his presidency, there are signs pointing to both the resilience of the American system and to the corrosive effect Trump’s actions have had on it.

Trump, like all previous presidents but perhaps more so than most, will continue to meet bureaucratic friction — some of it endemic to bureaucracies, and some unique to his presidency.

Because the president is ultimately less constrained in foreign policy than in domestic affairs, Trump’s presidency will continue to cause international concern by its very unpredictability.

Trump’s unpredictable policies have created a credibility gap; the president is no longer seen as having the final word on foreign policy and national security, and is often bypassed.

UNITED STATES STUDIES CENTRE TRUMP AND THE US PRESIDENCY: THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICA’S HIGHEST OFFICE

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IntroductionToday, it seems pretty hard to escape Trump. From his constant tweets, to his repeated transgression of American political and cultural norms of behaviour, to his evident pleasure in provoking and distracting the American public, Trump’s antics seem to dominate every waking moment. In many ways, it is as if Trump, having reached the commanding heights of American politics and global power, has commandeered centre stage in a Shakespearean play, proclaimed that “all the world’s a stage”, and condemned the rest of the world to the role of the audience. And it is with a mixture of fascination, bewilderment and anxiety that the world waits to find out if this play is a history, comedy, or tragedy.

Focusing too intently upon Trump, however, obscures profound issues surrounding the American presidency. Assessing the likelihood of change and making sense of the present requires a broader understanding of the presidency as an institution. There is no way of knowing how long-lasting the effects of Trump’s presidency will be on the office and the norms that have long governed American democracy. In fact, one year in, there are signs that point in both directions — to both the resilience of the American system and to the corrosive effect Trump’s actions have had on it.1 For all the confusion, disruption, and chaos of Donald Trump’s term thus far, he will continue to possess the immense powers of the American presidency, while also being frustrated by its many constraints.

Photo: Former presidents George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter (Getty)


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From America’s founding in the late 18th century, the framers of the US Constitution imagined the presidency as simultaneously powerful, constrained, and a work in progress. These seemingly contradictory impulses arose out of the historical experiences of rejecting monarchy in their war for independence and experiencing disunity and disorder in the period after independence. When the founding fathers drafted a constitution for the United States they did so consciously trying to steer a middle path between the abuses of royal tyranny and the chaos of weak central government. In practice, this meant the presidency is the head of the executive branch, but it is a co-equal branch of government with the legislature (Congress) and judiciary (federal courts). The president could not unilaterally enact legislation, interpret the constitution, appoint cabinet officials or dictate the government’s budget. Yet the president was still given more power than any other individual in government as the only elected officeholder accountable to the entire American populace. The checks and balances inherent to the constitution meant that the office of president was created to be empowered by the people, but restrained by the legislative and judicial branches of government and, like the Constitution itself, capable of changing as the times dictated.

As one scholar of the American presidency recently observed, “the enduring strength of the office comes from its original lack of definition”.2 This was because the Constitution merely sketched the roles and functions of the presidency, leaving open the interpretation of its powers. Most presidents have nonetheless held an expansive view of the power the

Constitution afforded the executive branch. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of national security. One of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, argued that as “the circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite… no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances”.3 The lack of clarity over the extent of executive power, however, left other founders concerned that this ambiguity could be abused. According to George Mason, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and inspiration for America’s Bill of Rights, “if strong and extensive powers are vested in the executive and that executive consists only of one person, the government will of course degenerate into monarchy”.

Arguments over the appropriate size, scale, and scope of the executive branch, and indeed of the entire federal government, drove the ratification debate and much of American political history from that point forward. Theodore Roosevelt, who served as president from 1901-1909, posited that unless expressly prohibited by law or the Constitution, the president could “do anything that the needs of the nation demanded”.4 Such a view was as contested in the early 20th century as it is today. And it points to the necessity of examining the personalities that have shaped, and been shaped by, the presidency.

Successive presidents redefined the presidency — its job description, its role, and its powers. America’s first president, George Washington, set precedents

Presidential power: A short history


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with everything he did. His aim was national stability, and he attempted to set the government’s general direction, establish a rough balance between the three branches of government, and restrain public passions where he could. Andrew Jackson, who served as America’s seventh president (1829-1837) broke the Washingtonian model of a disinterested, apolitical, and restrained president, riding to power on the back of a newly formed political party. In this view, the president, acting as the sole representative of the entire American public, was charged with protecting the national interest against manipulation by privileged elites, entitled to stock the federal bureaucracy with like-minded officials, and was required to fight against the other branches to carry out his program. Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president (1861-1865), remade American society through rhetoric and action, expanded executive power to an unprecedented degree, and transformed the role of commander-in-chief. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) responded to the Industrial Revolution’s social disruptions by rejecting the idea of limited government, regulating business, using the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to promote social and labour reforms, and fashioning the Executive Order — a power unique to the president that remains under increasing scrutiny for its constitutionality — into a driver of policymaking.5 He also actively worked to maintain a favourable balance of power in Asia and Europe, solidified America’s forward presence in the Pacific, and initiated the largest peacetime buildup of naval forces in American history.6

Modern presidents continued to redefine the scale, scope and power of the presidency. Franklin Roosevelt

(1933-1945) not only reimagined the social contract with the creation of the modern welfare state, but also gave the White House a central role defining the legislative agenda, making the president both the originator and enforcer of policy. A master at communicating directly with the public through the radio, his “fireside chats” shaped the image of the president as caretaker of the American people. And, most significantly, Roosevelt brought President Woodrow Wilson’s (1913-1921) internationalist vision of collective security into practice by presiding over the birth of the United Nations, and successfully guiding the nation during World War II. Harry Truman (1945-1953), presided over the militarisation of the Cold War and subsequent creation of modern foreign policy and military establishments of the US government, including the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency. President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) oversaw a massive arms build up and the end of the Cold War while working to diminish the role of the government in American life.

Of course, there have been plenty of examples of failure as well, and presidential power expanded in fits and starts. John Quincy Adams preceded Jackson, James Buchanan served ahead of Lincoln, and Herbert Hoover came before Franklin Roosevelt. And that says nothing about the long list of mediocre and forgettable presidents who were largely subordinate to a powerful Congress.7 But even such a partial list of transformative presidents suggests that the presidency is greatly shaped by particular occupants and their views.8

Photo: President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, 10 November 2016 (Getty)


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The president according to the Constitution The US Constitution is the supreme law of the United States, outlining the structure of the federal government, delineating the powers of the three separate branches of government and establishing the concept of federalism, which divides sovereignty between the federal and state governments. Article I posits the powers of the legislature; Article II the executive branch (the presidency); and Article III, the judiciary.

Article II of the US Constitution enumerates the role, power, and limitations on the American president. It does so in four sections, with the first defining the four-year term of office, the method of election, the necessary qualifications, compensation, and oath of office. The second section enumerates the president’s constitutionally prescribed roles as commander-in-chief of the military and head of the various executive departments, and gives him the power to grant pardons (except in the cases of impeachment), make treaties subject to the Senate’s approval, and nominate judges, ambassadors and officials.

The third article proscribes the president to inform Congress on the state of the Union, recommend policy for their consideration, and execute the laws; the fourth provides the circumstances for removal from office.9

Subsequent constitutional amendments revised the indirect election procedures of the president through the Electoral College (12th Amendment), shifted the start and end dates of presidential terms (20th Amendment), limited to two the number of times a person can be elected president (22nd Amendment), and outlines succession procedure if the president dies, resigns, is removed from office, or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency (25th Amendment).

The president, as outlined by the Constitution, was to play multiple roles in the American republic: commander-in-chief, head of state, and chief executive of the federal government.


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Clockwise from top left: Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln (Getty)


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In addition to his or her official position as head of state, head of the federal government and commander-in-chief of the US military, the modern president also takes on the responsibilities of party leader, legislative director, appointer-in-chief, and chief spokesperson. This grants the president the power to set the tone and policy for their party, drive a legislative agenda and propose a budget, appoint thousands of federal employees and nominate hundreds of federal judges, and use the office to influence policy by persuading the public, Congress, and the executive branch itself.10

Yet for all his or her power, there are multiple constraints on the exercise of it. The Constitution checks presidential power by including two other co-equal branches of government — the legislative and judiciary. Further, the president is limited by the federalist structure of the government, which established dual sovereignty between 50 independent states and federal government. There are further constraints inside the executive branch, as different agencies and departments — ranging from State, to Defense, to Treasury to the various intelligence agencies — compete for resources and operate quasi-independently of each other.

In practice, five key factors have determined the outward limits of a president’s power within the constitutional framework: (1) the circumstances

in which they came into and occupy office, (2) the president’s political standing and popularity, (3) the degree of friction between the different branches of government and between the state and national government, (4) the president’s ability to control the executive branch bureaucratic machinery, and (5) the president himself. How these factors interact determines the shape and the impact of a president’s term in office. While such evaluations are necessarily subjective, they nonetheless offer a useful set of criteria to evaluate presidencies and their subsequent legacies.

CircumstancesThroughout American history, the general rule has been that the more existential a threat seems, the more sweeping the powers afforded the president. Indeed, the most sweeping expansions of presidential power have come during war and economic crises. As Abraham Lincoln, possibly the most powerful president in US history, professed: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”11 That is not to say that Lincoln had no control over his circumstances, but that the skilful manipulation of circumstance is what facilitates a president’s effective exercise of power. This is what Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama’s first chief of staff,

The extent, and limit, of presidential power

Photo: Mount Rushmore National Memorial (Getty)


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meant when he reflected upon the financial crises and the major reforms that the Obama administration implemented, saying “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste… [as] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not before”.12

It is only extraordinary circumstances that yield extraordinary powers, such as the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the curtailment of political dissent during World War I, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Of course, circumstances are not just the product of unforeseen and momentous events. Whether a president is in sync or at cross-purposes to the prevailing national mood will dictate the amount of support or resistance a president encounters for their programs.13

The exercise of presidential power is also affected by the different stages of an administration’s tenure because its composition, policy inclinations, and relative power shift over time. Presidents often assume office with a fair amount of political momentum and are more likely to push major legislative items early, as was the case with Obamacare.14 While presidential campaigns typically promise a wholesale rejection of prior policies, an administration’s first year in power generally offers a mixed repudiation and selective, if quiet, embrace of the immediate past.15 Historically, the president’s party generally loses midterm congressional elections, as seen in the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations.16 If a president is defeated during a re-election campaign he becomes a “lame duck” as foreign and domestic observers shift their focus to the incoming team.

Political standingBut circumstance and prevailing national mood alone cannot explain a president’s ability to ‘get things done’. A president’s power, in the famous formulation of Harvard professor and White House advisor, Richard Neustadt, is “the power to persuade”. That power is based in large part on the perception of a president’s competence and popularity. Powerbrokers of all stripes — political, military, diplomatic, business and media — constantly calibrate their level of support or defiance of an administration based on their ongoing assessments of a president’s skill and willingness to act, and his standing with the general public.17

In practice, the higher the perception of a president’s prestige, the more support he will garner for his agenda; and the lower it falls, the more resistance it will generate.18 Popularity plays a role here. Lincoln, America’s most rhetorically gifted president, understood the importance of cultivating public opinion, arguing that “public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed”. To Lincoln, public opinion served as the critical foundation of all politics and policy, because “he who moulds public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed”.19

Where a president stands in public opinion can also set boundaries on the level of compliance he receives from members of his party in Congress and sometimes those from the opposing party as well. This was evident in the bipartisan support that George W. Bush received for his massive national security expansion amid 90 per cent approval ratings following the attacks on September 11, 2001. Getting things done, of course, takes much more than popularity. A president can be popular but still be unable to persuade political actors to do what he wants. While ideology plays a role, these calculations are rooted in an assessment of whether their own interests are likely to be served by supporting the president.

Separation of powersWhile it is a common belief that the three branches of the American government hold separate powers, in practice they hold overlapping and mutually dependent power, making it very challenging for a president to impose his will on the government for too long — or, at least not without the tacit consent of those other two institutions.

The built-in friction to the machinery of the US government is clearest in the realms of law, finance, and national security. The federal courts hold the power to declare the legality of a law or an administrative action. As Franklin Roosevelt found out when the

To Abraham Lincoln, public opinion served as the critical foundation of all politics and policy, because “he who moulds public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed”.


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Supreme Court declared much of his legislative agenda unconstitutional and as Trump learned when the federal courts repeatedly struck down his immigration ban, the judiciary can limit a president’s agenda.20 Yet, the judiciary and presidency are more co-dependent than exclusionary, as it often takes executive power to enforce the court’s decisions. Responding contemptuously to a decision contravening the White House’s policy of Indian Removal, Andrew Jackson was said to have declared that John Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time, “has made his decision; now let him enforce it”.21 This cuts the other way as well: Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to use federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional ensured compliance with the law.

If there are overlapping and competing sources of power regarding the enforcement of laws, this is even more true with the making of them. The president often serves as legislative leader, but it is Congress that enacts law. President John F. Kennedy lamented that while the president’s ability to veto congressional

legislation made it “very easy to defeat a bill in the Congress. It is much more difficult to pass one”.22 The difficulty varies based on the partisan composition of the House and Senate, but even when a president’s own party controls Congress there is no guarantee that they will master the necessary political horse trading entailed with legislation.

This is even more true in fiscal matters where the president proposes a budget but has to wrestle with Congress for passage. Congress jealously guards its possession of the “power of the purse”, and as Senator Lindsey Graham said this past March, “historically, presidential budgets do not fare well with Congress”.23

Indeed, while presidents typically wield more power in foreign policy than in domestic matters, the most conspicuous constraint on a president’s ability to conduct national security remains Congress’ budgetary and statutory authorities. In peacetime, Congress often

caps the size of an administration’s defence budget, limiting the resources available to a president.24 In wartime, Congress has the ability, rarely exercised, to defund a war by refusing to appropriate the necessary budget.

This is more pronounced in the legal realm, where Congress is constitutionally empowered to declare war and has the ability to place limits on the presidential use of military force. Starting with President Truman and the Korean War, presidents have largely circumvented congressional authorisation.25 Nevertheless, Congress has with mixed results attempted to curb presidential authority to commit US forces to armed conflict, most significantly with the 1973 War Powers Resolution. This committed the president to promptly notify Congress upon the commencement of military action and required the White House to seek authorisation for the use of military force if the forces remained engaged for more than 60 days. Additionally, Congress on occasion has acted to curb presidential use of covert action programs, particularly when such programs are seen as egregious abuses of presidential power. Although a variety of factors favour the executive branch in matters of national security, presidential power remains contested, and congressional restraints, timetables, and committee hearings influence an administration’s calculations on the timing and advisability of using military force.

The machinery of governmentPresidential power is also contested within the executive branch itself as a president’s power depends on his ability to drive the machinery of the executive. Effectiveness stems from the competence of the cabinet officials appointed, the balance and locus of power within an administration, and the willingness of the bureaucracy to follow the president’s lead. Cabinet members, whether working as a “team of rivals” or as a cohesive group, advise the president and transmit the expertise, institutional knowledge, and preferences of their respective agencies and departments to the White House.26 Moreover, they have the institutional ability and bandwidth to reach into the bureaucracy to provide direction and enforce compliance. This has become most visible in the National Security Council, which has grown from 10 members at its inception in 1947 to nearly 400 by the end of the

Presidential power remains contested, and congressional restraints, timetables, and committee hearings influence an administration’s calculations on the timing and advisability of using military force.


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Obama administration. This growth has increased the president’s power to conduct foreign policy, develop a budget, and assess interagency coordination. While all White Houses attempt to centralise and coordinate policymaking to some degree, to have effect there must be decentralised execution, and bureaucratic buy-in.27

It is common to hear new administrations complain that a hostile bureaucracy is passively fighting their agenda, but the challenge is often more structural than it is personal or political. Memorably titled “Bureaucracy Does Its Thing”, Robert Komer’s 1972 study on the Vietnam War was a larger statement about the institutional constraints of policy execution.28 Komer argued that policymakers in the White House were stymied as much by their failure to grasp organisational minutiae, as they were by bureaucratic inefficiencies, overlapping authorities, and resistance to change. As information tends to flow vertically in Washington, the executive is frequently filled with semi-autonomous entities that wage constant turf wars over budgets and authorities. These feuds, however, are not just over resources or strategy; they also concern policy objectives themselves. In theory, the White House deconflicts and adjudicates these institutional differences. But this depends upon the bureaucratic skill of an administration and a White House, and especially of a president.

Nowhere is the dynamic between a president and his executive branch more critical than when it comes to his role as commander-in-chief, in possession of an arsenal of nuclear and conventional weapons. Yet, this unimaginable power is predicated on whether the chain of command follows a presidential order that they deem excessive or unbalanced. According to Jack Goldsmith, an expert on national security law, the answer is they would: “The president’s view, and whatever orders stem from that view… carry the day.”29

But, as Richard Nixon’s presidency illustrates, the historical record on this is mixed. In multiple instances, and due to his erratic behaviour, subordinates checked Nixon’s direct commands, either by slow-rolling their response, or simply ignoring them. When Nixon ordered a retaliatory nuclear strike against North Korea for shooting down a Navy reconnaissance plane, his Defense Secretary Melvin Laird successfully obstructed the process. When Nixon wanted to bomb

the Damascus airport where a hijacked TWA flight was sitting, Kissinger decided “to give the president the opportunity to have second thoughts” and slowed the movement of aircraft carriers heading towards Syria. And in the days before Nixon’s resignation the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told his subordinates that if they received orders from the White House to use force, they should first confirm them with him or the secretary of defense.30 There is no way of knowing what would happen in a similar situation in the future, but these acts of bureaucratic obstruction point to the ability of a government to contain and, in certain instances, overrule a president.

The individualA final determinant on presidential power is the president himself. Michelle Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, declared that “being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are”.31 While easily dismissed as campaign rhetoric, such a sentiment captures something about presidential leadership that is impossible to quantify, but that matters enormously. A president’s resilience, firmness, willingness to take measured risk, attention to detail, and ability to tolerate and encourage disagreement, all play an enormous, perhaps decisive, role in determining the success of a presidency. Such a list — temperament, character, and judgement in short hand — does not reveal what a president will do in a given situation. It does however suggest the manner in which the occupant of the Oval Office approaches their tenure.32


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Donald Trump is subjecting the presidency to a stress test, challenging the outer boundaries of democratic governance. In his demands for personal loyalty oaths over constitutional obligations, his tarnishing of the integrity of independent government institutions and his attacks on free speech and the independent media, the president, in the words of his son-in-law, is attempting to “bend, and possibly break, the office to his will”.33 Trump is not the first populist to seize control of the White House, as Andrew Jackson’s tumultuous eight-year term demonstrated.34 Nor is he the first president to bring the government to the brink of a constitutional crisis. But due to policies that remain both opaque and uncertain in many critical areas, actions and speech that continue to transgress the normal bounds of American political discourse, and lingering questions over how much more disruptive his presidency could become, Trump has heightened concerns about the long-term effect he is having on the presidency and the American system of checks and balances.

CircumstancesAs every occupant of the White House discovers, it is the domestic and foreign circumstances under which they assume office that shapes their presidency. No matter the “American carnage” that Trump described in his inauguration address, Trump’s presidency did not start out with an existential crisis on the scale of the American Civil War, the Great Depression, the bombing

of Pearl Harbor, or even the global financial crisis.35 A true international crisis, and perhaps a domestic terrorist event, might change that dynamic, yet present conditions do not permit such an outright suppression of civil liberties, as Trump has sought in regards to libel laws and free speech.36

While there is much Trump can do to question American global leadership, the jury is out as to whether circumstances make it clear that he has a mandate to do so. In fact, American support for its alliance and defence commitments actually seems to be increasing.37 During the 2016 campaign, 89 per cent of the overall public thought that maintaining existing alliances was very or somewhat effective at achieving American foreign policy goals. Among self-identified Trump supporters, those numbers dipped to 84 per cent — hardly an embrace of his isolationist position.38 More telling was the Chicago Council of Global Affairs October 2017 poll results. Not only was support for the alliance system and defence commitments holding 10 months into the Trump era, but it actually seemed to be increasing, with more Americans convinced that alliances are very effective.39 As this data underscored, “the US public is not buying [Trump’s] argument”.40 While premature to conclude that such initial reactions are tantamount to a wholesale rejection of Trump’s transactional view of American foreign policy, it would be an error to read Trump’s election as a wholesale rejection of America’s commitments to allies and presence in places such as the Asia-Pacific region and

The Trump stress test

Photo: President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, 28 January 2017 (Getty)


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Europe. While Trump has the ability to challenge long-held assumptions of America’s place in the world, such challenges have already faced bipartisan resistance from the public and Congress.

Political standingTrump’s future political standing will also determine the level of support he receives for his agenda. Based on polls, special congressional elections, command of the public narrative and ability to deliver legislative victories, the results are mixed. His favourability ratings are historically low for this early in a presidency. Indeed, he is the only president that a majority of Americans disapprove of this soon after his inauguration, and he has the lowest net approval ratings in the history of presidential polling.41 Further, the combination of the president’s unfavourability ratings, mixed state election results, and the fact that significantly more Republicans are retiring from congressional seats in 2018 than normal, make this year’s midterm elections a particularly challenging political environment for Republicans. These factors will play an outsized role in whether Trump finds himself with an even friendlier and more pliant, or hostile and more antagonistic Congress.42

How Trump’s message resonates with Americans, however, is just as relevant to his political fortunes. Nowhere has Trump’s message been louder than on Twitter. Trump realised faster than anyone else that his direct and unfiltered access to a global audience on a moment’s notice had upended the rules of mass communication and he could communicate, provoke, and distract pretty much constantly. Less clear, however, is whether the bully pulpit’s new medium is powerful, or just noisy. Trump’s tweets, for example, seemed to indicate that transgender individuals would no longer be allowed to serve in America’s armed forces, yet Defense Department policy has not shifted. While such tweets command attention, it is far from clear whether they herald policy shifts or just reflect his immediate and unfiltered reactions to events.43

Politically, Trump’s fortunes will be judged not just by what he says, but what he is able to accomplish. Here the record is mixed. The multiple attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare, build a border wall, develop an infrastructure strategy, or even pass a budget undercut the White House’s claims of Trump’s stellar

legislative accomplishments and boasts that he has signed more bills “than any president, ever”.44 In truth, Trump signed fewer bills into law in his first year than any recent president.45 But his administration has delivered on multiple promises as well, including passing tax reform, rolling back business and environmental regulations, pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, withdrawing from the Paris climate deal, degrading ISIS, and enacting tougher immigration enforcement among other measures. As long as Trump finds some success for his agenda and is able to deliver to his core supporters — either through executive actions or congressional support — his political standing will not sink below a floor. But, until he has the ability to attract new supporters, his agenda will continue to face stiff political headwinds. History illustrates that if his popularity and accomplishments do not improve, he will likely face a primary challenger in 2020.

The separation of powersMany have asked what Trump’s constant attacks on democratic norms, constitutional restraints, and morality portend, and questioned whether this means the end of democracy and the beginning of American autocracy and tyranny.46 For that to happen, the presidency would have to gain decisive control over the other branches of government and an ability to effectively drive the bureaucracy under its command. For the time being, while the institutional constraints on power are absolutely being tested, they have not cracked. The judiciary has upheld its independence and status as a co-equal branch of government, both striking down a number of the president’s executive orders on constitutional grounds — such as his hurried implementation of a travel ban on numerous Muslim-majority nations — while upholding other measures it found constitutional.

In a Republican-controlled Congress, Republicans have had limited success in achieving their agenda. Congressional Republicans can only claim two major

The combination of President Trump’s unfavourability ratings, mixed state election results, and the fact that significantly more Republicans are retiring from congressional seats in 2018 than normal, make this year’s midterm elections a particularly challenging political environment for Republicans.


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accomplishments for 2017 — the passage of tax reform legislation and the confirmation of the Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. House and Senate Republicans have failed to repeal and replace Obamacare despite repeated attempts; and the Senate vote to increase sanctions on Russia for its interference in the US election and other offences passed 98-2 despite the threat of a presidential veto.

At the same time, however, congressional Republicans seem willing to bend to Trump’s will in exchange for presidential support for various legislative priorities. This is most significant in the ongoing investigations into allegations of obstruction of justice, collusion

with Russians during the presidential campaign, and the multiple ethics violations and charges of personal profit brought against Trump and his family. In all of these, congressional Republicans have not been willing to risk an overly public break, or to too aggressively investigate a Republican president — and have regularly sought to weaken, delay, and discredit the ongoing investigations.

Of the few Republican senators who have publicly criticised the president, none have insisted on transparency and accountability on the president’s personal financial affairs or with regards to the Russia investigation, while all have advanced his agenda and voted with him in almost complete lockstep.

Because of the federated nature of the American polity, state governments also have the ability to circumscribe the president’s power. Just as President Obama found that state governors could refuse federal funding for mandatory public healthcare under Obamacare, Trump has had similar challenges from states and cities opposed to his policies. On issues surrounding climate change, immigration and voter fraud, the administration has faced opposition. For example, because of the market power of California — the world’s sixth largest economy — the administration might find its ability to roll back federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions neutralised. Pledging to run a “countermovement”, California’s governor has strategised with other like-minded state and national leaders on how to set state standards, part of which

involves pressuring business to abide by state-set standards.47

It is important to note that beyond institutional constraints, it is norms of behaviour that establish the boundaries of American democracy. These are, in one former presidential speechwriter’s words, “the unenforced and unenforceable standards of civility and respect” that keep leaders’ baser instincts in check.48 Indeed, the founding fathers imagined that the presidency would be filled with individuals “pre-eminent for ability and virtue” as a defence against “men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs” who would “by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means” betray the public trust.49 Indeed, they believed personal restraint, particularly among the nation’s leaders, to be necessary for self-government. Nowhere is this more true than with the president, who in addition to commanding a fearsome arsenal is able, with his rhetoric, to incite unrest or sooth societal grievances. Here, Trump has had a direct and coarsening effect on political discourse — evident in his stirring ethnic and racial prejudices, encouraging police brutality, labelling the press as “enemies of the people”, as well as politicising previously non-partisan institutions like the CIA and FBI. It is this constant violation of political norms that ultimately will most challenge the institutions designed to safeguard American liberties.

Central to the current stress test is whether or not Trump has abused the powers of the presidency in order to protect his own personal interests. This question raises discrete and broader points. Narrowly, it asks whether, in the midst of multiple investigations over obstruction of justice and conspiring with a foreign power to affect the 2016 election, the president has the ability to fire or pardon whomever he chooses — including himself — regardless of motive or intent. Trump’s personal lawyer has already suggested that the “president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case”.50 This broaches the larger, and more consequential, point of how the president is bound by and held accountable to the law. The actions that Trump takes, and the responses of law enforcement officers and members of Congress, might be the ultimate test of how resilient democratic institutions and norms are, and how much they have deteriorated.

The actions that Trump takes, and the responses of law enforcement officers and members of Congress, might be the ultimate test of how resilient democratic institutions and norms are, and how much they have deteriorated.


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The machinery of governmentWithin the executive branch, the president holds much greater sway, but his ability to force his preferences on the government are hardly uncontested. Cabinet secretaries “serve at the pleasure of the president”, but they are not without power and status in their own right. Here, Trump may have something of a ‘James Mattis Problem’ in that Defense Secretary Mattis is not only more popular with Congress than President Trump, but is known to fundamentally disagree with the president on a number of policy areas. President Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment centred on his dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The political dynamics in the aftermath of the Civil War are wholly different than today. But while such a dismissal is not unimaginable, Mattis’ personal integrity as well as his standing with Congress, would constrain the president. Moreover, Trump’s cabinet, while loyal, does disagree with him in private, and has done so publicly to an unprecedented degree for modern administrations.51

Effective execution of the president’s agenda requires a federal government ready, willing, and able to carry it out. This is particularly pronounced in the realm of foreign policy where complicated issues require multiple actors coordinating resources and deconflicting authorities. As Stephen Sestanovich has noted, “to work, they depend on the resources, technical expertise, coordinated implementation, and support of the national-security bureaucracy”.52

While premature to conclude that the president has won or lost the debate on America’s role in the world — including its purpose, coherence, and prospects — Trump, according to Sestanovich, “is certainly losing control of it” because of his inability, or unwillingness, to adequately staff the government.53

While the pace of nominations has picked up, both the number of nominations and Senate confirmations of presidential appointments lags significantly behind his predecessors.54 It took nearly a year to nominate and confirm the Pentagon and State’s top officials for Asia. Many critical subordinate positions remain vacant and as recently as February 2018 the White House had no ambassadors in Canberra or Seoul. In the conduct of foreign policy, the administration’s lack of experience combined with its marginalisation of the State Department and other organs of national security mean that it has less ability to effectively carry out any strategy.

The individualRestraint and Donald Trump are not words that are often paired. And with good reason. As a long-time Trump friend explained, “Donald Trump has spent his entire life a free agent; he has always done things his way”.55 As head of a family-run business, Trump did not have to deal with shareholders or a board of directors that could hold him accountable for his decisions. Always playing offence and never apologising served Trump well as a real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity, allowing him to ignore criticism, put his opponents on their heels, and influence, if not control, the narrative.56 It was Trump’s temperament and character that spawned the birth of the ‘Never-Trump Republicans’ who, like Peter Wehner, concluded that “he is unlikely to be contained by norms and customs, or even by laws and the Constitution. For Mr. Trump, nothing is sacred. The truth is malleable, instrumental, subjective”.57 While inconsistency can be a virtue, as it allows policy to adapt to changing conditions and new facts, unmoored to principle and untethered to fact, it provides a poor basis for leadership.


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Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy

Even though the broad contours of Trump’s opinions on a number of issues — from the value of free trade and alliances to his sympathies towards authoritarian strongmen — have remained fairly consistent, the White House’s communication of his policy has been deliberately erratic.58

The challenge is deeper, however, than communication. From repeatedly questioning security commitments, to flip-flopping policy positions, to undermining the efforts of his administration, the president suffers from a “credibility gap”. This is compounded by Trump’s penchant for speaking falsely on a regular basis.59 As a result, both at home and abroad (and even with long-standing allies) large majorities find Trump untrustworthy.60

While some see more continuity than change in Trump’s foreign policy, the majority of outside observers have found it challenging to understand the intent of White House policy on most key issues from NAFTA and NATO, to Asia and the Middle East. To some degree, there will always be uncertainty after a presidential election about how much policy will actually change. This uncertainty is heightened when there is a transition from one party to another. It is heightened further when the president who takes office continues to make statements which are outside the bounds of normal foreign policy discourse and procedurally opaque. Trump, to be sure, wants to be less predictable than his predecessors and international opponents, declaring “we must, as a nation, be more unpredictable”.61

There are countervailing forces at work against Trump’s penchant for unpredictability. Secretary Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson collectively are referred to as “the adults in the room”, and have attempted to give structure, organisation, and coherence to the administration’s foreign policy.62 But the president’s unpredictability continues to undermine such efforts, as his pronouncements on issues ranging from trade, to North Korea, have repeatedly and explicitly undercut his cabinet secretaries. The result has made it nearly impossible to understand what is a tweet and what, ultimately, is policy.

As Trump knows, from a negotiating perspective, and certainly when dealing with competitors, unpredictability carries some advantages and, judiciously applied, can provide leverage. But elevating unpredictability to a strategy has downsides. It has confused allies, promoted instability in critical trade relationships, elevated

the risks of miscommunication in a crisis, and left the world questioning the credibility of American commitments.63 The actions required to demonstrate resolve and to signal deterrence have likely increased, as have the chances of unintentional escalation.

Some of this will be offset by more trusted cabinet members and the might of the American military, but no matter how many times US alliances are reaffirmed by senior officials, presidential unpredictability raises fears that America will not live up to its security guarantees. As a major US ally in Asia commented, “Washington, DC is now the epicenter of instability in the world”.64 Perhaps the most damaging result is that the president no longer is seen as having the final word on foreign policy and national security and is often bypassed. “I’ll tell you, honestly, for a foreigner, in the past we were used to going to the White House to get our work done,” Shivshankar Menon, India’s former foreign secretary and national security adviser to the prime minister recently stated.65 “Now we go to the corporations, to Congress, to the Pentagon, wherever.”

Left to right: H. R. McMaster, James Mattis. Donald Trump and John Kelly (Getty)


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History tells us that the unpredictable nature of circumstances and individual leaders means the shape and power of the presidency is always evolving. Regardless of the president, some elements of the presidency are likely to endure as permanent features, and some old debates are likely to resurface.

What will stay the sameDifferent moments change the shape of the presidency. The challenges of the first year differ from those of the second, and those of a first term from a second term. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton’s tenures all furnish examples of presidents turning to foreign policy when frustrated at home, and when they are in legacy-building mode. Certain moments during a president’s tenure — generally at the outset, after re-election or after profound shocks such as 9/11 — are more conducive than others to producing or re-evaluating strategy.

While Trump’s election clearly indicated profound dissatisfaction with the American political process, it has not transformed the requirements of effective governance from process to fiat. Guiding legislation through Congress, negotiating with foreign leaders, and building coalitions at home and abroad are tasks that require time and skill. Because policy is as much about process and personnel as it is about

pronouncement, future presidents will continue to find governing different than campaigning.

Likewise, it is a safe bet to conclude that the next, or even the next several, administrations will define themselves in opposition to Trump’s presidency. George W. Bush came into office with an ABC (Anything But Clinton) mentality, while Barack Obama most concisely defined his relatively restrained foreign policy strategy, “Don’t Do Stupid Shit”, to juxtapose it against the perceived sins of George W. Bush’s. That is obviously more true if a Democrat is the next occupant of the White House, but will probably hold even if a Republican succeeds Trump.

Finally, some have suggested that in response to Trump, and perhaps during this administration, the locus of power could shift back to the legislative branch. History, however, suggests that the president will continue to occupy the “bully pulpit” that sits at the centre of American political discourse. Congress can resist the president, as it did during the Nixon and Ford administrations in the 1970s, and it often becomes the centre of action during political impasses, as it was during Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 or during the budget showdowns of the Obama era. But it cannot take over foreign policy. As a result, the global focus will remain on the words of the president, the White House and the national security apparatus more than it does Congress.

Implications

Photo: The White House (Getty)


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What might changeThroughout American history there have been periodic calls to reform the presidency. Those proposed reforms have taken on different shapes depending on both the circumstances and the occupant of the office, and have alternatively called for scaling up its reach, stripping back its powers, and making it more manageable. In the aftermath of Trump, several of these debates and recommendations are likely to resurface.

First, it is almost inevitable that Americans will debate how the presidential election is conducted and whether the process should change. This discussion will revolve around three questions: Is there a better nomination process within the major parties; is it time to shift away from the Electoral College and towards a popular vote; and is there a better way to safeguard American elections from foreign interference?

The prolonged campaign season combined with the pace of individual state primaries tends to push candidates to cater to their party’s most dedicated base. The charges against the current system are that the nomination process produces candidates less attractive to the broad centre of American politics, bloodied by partisan ideological fights and therefore vulnerable in a general election, and more focused on smaller states, such as Iowa or New Hampshire, whose primaries occur earliest in the calendar. Unless these states voluntarily abandon their early primary dates, or the political parties mandate a streamlined and tightened nominating process, such changes are unlikely.

A second complaint that will reappear is whether to abolish the Electoral College. Given that Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes to Hillary Clinton, but still was elected president due to the mathematics of the Electoral College, this charge has particular resonance even if most of the voices advocating for its abolition are Democrats. Trump is not the first president to assume office having lost the popular vote; in fact, he’s the fifth. The prospects of eliminating the Electoral College and replacing it with a popular vote, however, are slim. Not only would it require the passage of a constitutional amendment; but it would also privilege urban population centres over low-density rural areas, which would be politically unpalatable to a large number of American politicians.

One set of reforms which will be called for will be to streamline the focus and ease the burdens of the office. In his recent survey of the presidency, Jeremi Suri concluded that “by the start of the twenty-first century, the inhuman demands of the office made it impossible to succeed as president”.66 Proliferating responsibilities, accumulating demands, accelerating news cycles, and busier work schedules have left presidents at a disadvantage. The hectic pace has translated into a daily grind that has often left presidents reacting to events with the immediate crowding out the important, bereft of time for strategic thinking, and ultimately less well equipped to handle the extraordinary demands of the job.

Apart from the toll the office exacts, its frenetic pace translates into a constantly distracted chief executive. Most notorious here is Jimmy Carter, whose perfectionism and zealous attention to detail led him to read hundreds of pages of detailed briefings each week, check the accuracy of the budget’s arithmetic, and even personally assess all requests to use the White House tennis courts.67 Although this is an extreme example which Carter eventually moved away from, it led his chief speechwriter, James Fallows, to conclude that “if [the president] is distracted from the big choices by the torrent of petty details, the big choices will not get made”.68

To help future presidents strike a balance, particularly in the aftermath of a presidency that is viewed as impulsive and in need of institutional “guardrails”, debates about the bureaucratic structure within the executive branch and constraints on presidential action will resurface. The bureaucracy’s focus will be on institutional reform, but the questions will be multiple, ranging from streamlining decisionmaking, to eliminating petty burdens on the president, to shifting certain responsibilities away from the executive.

In national security matters, the discussion will centre on how to ensure the presidency is more focused on decision-making, how to decentralise execution to

Trump is not the first president to assume office having lost the popular vote; in fact, he’s the fifth. The prospects of eliminating the Electoral College and replacing it with a popular vote, however, are slim.


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executive agencies, and how to ensure that strategic decisions are thoroughly vetted. This is especially true on command-and-control of the armed forces, where Trump’s presidency has revived talk among academics, legal experts, military officers and senators about what checks are in place to constrain a reckless or illegal order.70 Debate has already commenced on restructuring the National Security Council, but after Trump’s presidency there will be renewed examination of whether other branches of government, executive branch agencies and the military should have more ability to constrain a president.

Crucially, as Trump has disrupted many norms within the national security community, there will be further scrutiny on the constitutional norms surrounding the president’s role as commander-in-chief.71 President

George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum has recently pointed out that the military and intelligence services have developed methods to cope with Trump “that circumvent the president’s role as commander-in-chief”. From divulging highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, to telling Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte the location of two US nuclear submarines, Trump has caused the national security community to recalibrate what information it shares and how promptly it responds to the president. Even for those who applaud efforts to ‘cage’ Trump, and certainly for those who do not, these actions have the potential to slowly erode the president’s role in the chain of command, degrade civilian-military relations, and challenge the principle of civilian control over the armed forces.

At some point, the Trump presidency will end — whether that comes in 2025, 2021, or sooner — and the nation will move on. While it is far too early to conclude what the sum total of Trump’s effect on the presidency will amount to, several observations can be made. At present, the balance of power between the branches of government continues to hold, but could tip if the 2018 midterm elections — where a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will face re-election — either bring more hardcore Trump supporters to Washington, or tip Congress to the Democrats. Trump, however, will probably not preside over a major or permanent reorganisation of the US government in a way similar to Andrew Jackson,

Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan. Like all previous presidents, but perhaps more so than most, Trump will continually meet bureaucratic friction — some endemic to bureaucracies, and some unique to his presidency.

But while the separation of powers has the potential to constrain Trump domestically, it is much less able to restrain him internationally. While all American presidents are both empowered and constrained by the office, what is different in the Trump administration is the seeming instability emanating from the White House. This turbulence has, and will, continue to subject the integrity of America’s political system and position in the world to a stress test.

Conclusion


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Endnotes1. For instance, see Eliot Cohen’s pieces, “A Clarifying

Moment in American History,” and “American are Rising to the This Historic Moment,” one year apart from each other, in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/a-clarifying-moment-in-american-history/514868/; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump-clarifying/550562/?utm_source=twb.

2. Jeremi Suri, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office (New York: Basic Books, 2017), p. 20.

3. Hamilton, Federalist Paper 23. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed23.asp.

4. John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 108; for a spirited and controversial take on this point, see Harvey Mansfield, “The Law and the President in a National Emergency: Who You Gonna Call?’ Weekly Standard, January 16, 2006. http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-law-and-the-president/article/7751

5. Roosevelt issued more than 1,000 executive orders, nearly as many as all of his predecessors combined and almost ten times as many as his predecessor. For more, see Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). For data on the use of Executive Orders, and for a repository of their texts, see he American Presidency Project: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php

6. Michael J. Green, By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 78-113.

7. Robert Kagan recently made the argument for congressionally-led government, arguing that “for the decades after the Civil War but also to a lesser extent during the 1920s... Congress ran the show on many critical matters and the president dared take no action without the approval of powerful committee chairmen.” “Impeaching Trump is a long shot. There’s another way to protect the country,” Washington Post, September 4, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeaching-trump-is-a-long-shot-theres-another-way-to-protect-the-country/2017/09/04/78dd58bc-8d96-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?utm_term=.cf035a7f2f83. See also, the Washington Post’s editorial for the amplification of congressional

power, “What to do with an Unfit President,” Washington Post, October 9, 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-to-do-with-an-unfit-president/2017/10/09/074cc0e2-ad09-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.28ee1d7a7654&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

8. For a particularly insightful account of how different presidents’ ideas continue to shape the conduct of American foreign policy see Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2003). And, for those interested in a deeper dive on the presidents, see the Washington Post podcast, “Presidential,” which explores the character and legacy of each of the American presidents. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/presidential-podcast/.

9. For more on the history of impeachment, see Simon Jackman’s Impeachment 101: The History, Process and Prospect of a Trump Impeachment, July 18, 2017. https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/impeachment-101-the-history-process-and-prospect-of-a-trump-impeachment.

10. At the start of the Trump administration, there were roughly 4,100 positions in the government open to presidential appointment process: https://www.govinfo.gov/features/2016-plum-book. For a list of judicial appointments by president, see: http://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/authorized-judgeships/judgeship-appointments-president. On the president’s ability to persuade see Richard E. Neustadt’s classic Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: The Free Press, 1990).

11. Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=104107

12. Rahm Emanuel, November 18, 2018, WSJ Interview. http://www.wsj.com/video/rahm-emanuel-on-the-opportunities-of-crisis/3F6B9880-D1FD-492B-9A3D-70DBE8EB9E97.html

13. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Steven Sestanovich, Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama (New York: Knopf, 2014).

14. Julia Azari, “A President’s First 100 Days Really Do Matter,” FiveThirtyEight, 17 January 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-presidents-first-100-days-really-do-matter/;

15. The University of Virginia’s Miller Center’s First Year


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Project features a terrific set of essays by leading scholars on the challenges that different incoming administrations have faced in their first years. http://firstyear2017.org/. As an additional resource, see also Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History. https://www.smu.edu/CPH.

16. John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, “Seat in Congress/Lost by the President’s Party in the Mid-Term Elections - F. Roosevelt - Obama,” The American Presidency Project, 19 December 2014, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/mid-term_elections.php

17. Neustadt described this as the “Washington community” which consisted of “Members of Congress and of his Administration, governors of states, military commanders in the field, leading politicians in both parties, representatives of private organizations, newsmen of assorted types and sizes, foreign diplomats (and principles abroad)… no matter what their physical location” these were all “Washingtonians.” Neustadt, p. 50.

18. Neustadt, p. 76 ff.

19. Paul M. Angle, ed., The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 128.

20. The Executive Order was then revised by the Trump administration, which the Supreme Court upheld in part, and struck down in part as still violating the equal protection clause.

21. H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 493.

22. John F. Kennedy, “Television and Radio Interview: After Two Years - A Conversation With the President.” December 17, 1962. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9060.

23. Lindsey Graham, March 16, 2017. https://twitter.com/lindseygrahamsc/status/842465304215207941?lang=en

24. See Ashley Townshend, Dougal Robinson, and Brendan Thomas-Noone’s “Trump, Congress and the 2018 defence budget: A primer for Australia.” https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/trump-congress-and-the-2018-defence-budget-a-primer-for-australia

25. This method has become the norm over the past seven decades, and Truman’s decision set the precedent for subsequent presidential justifications for authorisation of force without congressional authorisation. The standard work remains Louis Fischer’s Presidential War Powers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995). For a helpful overview, see Jennifer Elsea and Richard Grimmett, The Congressional Research Service, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications.” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL31133.pdf

26. For examples of histories that do a particularly good job at sketching presidents surrounded by strong and talented groups of advisors, see Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas’s The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), James Mann’s Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), and Doris

Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).

27. During the Obama administration, his first three of his secretaries of defence complained that the White House intruded too far into operational details. Robert Gates claimed that “the controlling nature of the Obama White House and the NSS staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level.” Leon Panetta charged that “officials who knew the most about certain subjects were excluded from important public debates.” And, Chuck Hagel groused that “We seemed to veer away from the big issues.” Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), p. 587; Leon Panetta, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace (New York, Penguin Press, 2014), p. 232; Chuck Hagel, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/18/hagel-the-white-house-tried-to-destroy-me. For a history of the NSC, see David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).

28. R. W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.- GVN Performance in Vietnam. Santa Monica: RAND, 1972. For a modern take on this challenge, see Frances Z. Brown, “Bureaucracy Does Its Thing, Again,” The American Interest, Vol. 8, No. 2. October 9, 2012. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/10/09/bureaucracy-does-its-thing-again. The classic study of bureaucracy is James Q. Wilson’s Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York: Basic Books, 1989). Also relevant is Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979).

29. Sarah Grant and Jack Goldsmith, “What if President Trump Orders Secretary of Defense Mattis to Do Something Deeply Unwise?,” Lawfare, 22 August 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-if-president-trump-orders-secretary-defense-mattis-do-something-deeply-unwise

30. Both of these examples are cited by David Ignatius in his column “Our Best Hope against Nuclear War,” Washington Post, October 3, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/our-best-hope-against-nuclear-war/2017/10/03/7df61d86-a883-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.a6cc14e44274

31. Michelle Obama, DNC Convention Speech, September 4, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160578836/transcript-michelle-obamas-convention-speech

32. Fred I. Grenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Beyond this, see James MacGregor Burns’ Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Two particularly useful works that examine character are William Lee Miller’s Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) and Peggy Noonan’s When Character was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).

33. Maggie Haberman, Glen Thrush, and Peter Baker, “Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation,”


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New York Times, December 9, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/politics/donald-trump-president.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

34. For contrasting views on the relevance of Andrew Jackson to Trump’s presidency see, H. W. Brands, “Trump as the New Andrew Jackson: Not on Old Hickory’s Life,” Politico Magazine, January 29, 2017 and Walter Russell Mead’s interview with Susan Glasser, “The Man who put Andrew Jackson’s Portrait in the Oval Office,” Politico Magazine, January 22, 2018. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-populist-president-history-214705 and https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/22/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-216493. Also see Mead’s “The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-01-20/jacksonian-revolt.

35. Donald J. Trump, “The Inaugural Address,” January 20, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address

36. Jenna Johnson, “A Brief History of Donald Trump’s Mixed Messages on Freedom of Speech,” The Washington Post, 29 September 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-brief-history-of-donald-trumps-mixed-messages-on-freedom-of-speech/2017/09/28/dd44160c-a3b6-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html?utm_term=.b95795e5cdfa.

37. Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “What Americans think about America First,” October 2, 2017, p. 10. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/what-americans-think-about-america-first

38. 2016 Chicago Council Survey, “America in the Age of Uncertainty: American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy,” October 6, 2016, p. 29. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/ccgasurvey2016_america_age_uncertainty.pdf.

39. Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “What Americans think about America First,” p. 10.

40. Ibid, p. 11.

41. Henry Enten, “Six Months In, Trump Is Historically Unpopular,” FiveThirtyEight, 17 July 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/six-months-in-trump-is-historically-unpopular/. FiveThirtyEight serves as an aggregator of poll data; for a daily tracker of Trump’s ratings, as well as a comparison to his predecessor’s, see: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

42. On Democrats internal squabbles, see Alan Greenblat’s “Are Democrats Headed for a McGovern Redux?” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/09/democrats-mcgovern-1972-trump-nixon-2020-215687; on Bannon’s ongoing insurgency within the GOP, see Robert Kagan’s, “Faster, Steve Bannon. Kill! Kill!” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/faster-steve-bannon-kill-kill/2017/10/11/77bdf5c2-aea7-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.4bc231d9cb88

43. See Nicholas Carr, “Why Trump Tweets (And Why We Listen)” Politico Magazine, January 26, 2018. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald-trump-twitter-addiction-216530. For a fuller treatment that proceeded Trump’s presidential campaign, see Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). For Trump’s Twitter statistics, see, https://twittercounter.com/realDonaldTrump

44. Donald J. Trump, “Trump: U.S. Wealth Has ‘Been Drained’, The Washington Post, 18 July 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-us-wealth-has-been-drained/2017/07/17/b1eb89f4-6b2b-11e7-abbc-a53480672286_video.html?utm_term=.c353c1befb1c

45. GovTrack Insider, “Falling From First to Last: President Trump has signed the fewest bills into law by this point in any recent president’s first year,” GovTrack Insider, 22 December 2017, https://govtrackinsider.com/falling-from-first-to-last-president-trump-has-signed-the-fewest-bills-into-law-by-this-point-in-8945aac6ad54

46. In particular, see Andrew Sullivan, “America Has Never Been so Ripe for Tyranny,” New York Magazine, May 1, 2016. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html; David Frum, “How to Build an Autocracy,” The Atlantic, March 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/; Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017).

47. Evan Halper, “Gov. Jerry Brown calls for ‘countermovement’ against Trump’s ‘colossal mistake’ on climate change,” Los Angeles Times, 28 March 2017, http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-gov-jerry-brown-calls-for-1490734956-htmlstory.html.

48. Michael Gerson, “America is Riding a Carousel of Hate,” The Washington Post, 15 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-riding-a-carousel-of-hate/2017/06/15/c85caabc-520b-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html?utm_term=.a84261ffed24

49. Federalist Paper 68; 10. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp.

50. Mike Allen, “Exclusive: Trump lawyer claims the ‘President cannot obstruct justice,’” Axios, 4 December 2017, https://www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-lawyer-claims-the-president-cannot-obstruct-justice-1513388369-032ba40d-55c3-42d6-bdf9-d6399ed7a2ce.html

51. Abby Phillip and Jenna Johnson, “Trump undercuts his aides by contradicting their statements,” The Washington Post, 6 June 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-undercuts-his-aides-by-contradicting-their-statements/2017/06/06/1ae3155a-4ad2-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html?utm_term=.25415c147bb9 .

52. Sestanovich, “The Brilliant Incoherence of Trump’s Foreign Policy.” The Atlantic, May 2017.

53. Ibid.


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54. The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, “Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far,” The Washington Post, 12 February 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?utm_term=.7cbc5ab8f625

55. Josh Dawsey, “White House aides lean on delays and distractions to manage Trump,” Politico, 10 September 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/trump-aides-guard-rails-243608.

56. Trump has attributed the origin of these techniques to the influence of Roy Cohn. See, Jonathan Mahler and Matt Flegenheimmer, “What Donald Trump Learned from Joseph McCarthy’s Right-Hand Man,” New York Times, June 21, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html; Marie Brenner’s “How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America,” Vanity Fair, August 2017. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship.

57. Peter Wehner, “Why I Cannot Fall in Line Behind Trump,” New York Times, January 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/opinion/sunday/why-i-cannot-fall-in-line-behind-trump.html.

58. Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy,” Politico Magazine, January 20, 2016. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546

59. For a running catalogue of Trump’s falsehoods, see David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, “Trump’s Lies,” The New York Times, 14 December 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html

60. On these points and others, see Keren Yarhi-Milo’s insightful, “After Credibility: American Foreign Policy in the Trump Era,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2018. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-12-12/after-credibility. For polling data abroad, see http://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx; https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/08/politics/cnn-poll-trump-one-year-later/index.html.

61. Donald J. Trump, “Transcript: Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech,” The New York Times, 27

April 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html?_r=0.

62. See James Mann’s “The Adults in the Room,” The New York Review of Books, October 26, 2017. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/trump-adult-supervision/.

63. See Joshua A. Geltzer and Jon Finer, “The Only Constant is Trump,” The Atlantic, May 26, 2017: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/the-only-constant-is-trump/528048/.

64. Susan B. Glasser, “Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech,” Politico, June 5, 2017. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/05/trump-nato-speech-national-security-team-215227.

65. Evan Osnos, “Making China Great Again,” The New Yorker, January 8, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again.

66. Suri, The Impossible Presidency, p. 289.

67. For Carter’s reading habits, see the Miller Center’s Oral History with Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/zbigniew-brzezinski-oral-history-assistant-president.

68. James Fallows, “The Passionless Presidency: The Troubles with Jimmy Carter’s Administration,” The Atlantic, May 1979. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1979/05/the-passionless-presidency/308516.

69. On NSC reform, see Michèle Flournoy, “Nine Lessons for Navigating National Security,” March 25, 2016. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/nine-lessons-for-navigating-national-security.

70. https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/authority-to-order-the-use-of-nuclear-weapons-111417; https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/17/16656856/trump-congress-nuclear-weapons-war. See also, Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin Press, 2013).

71. David Frum, “The Problem with ‘Containing’ Donald Trump,” The Atlantic, October 9, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/corker-trump/542409.


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About the author

Dr Charles EdelSenior Fellow and Visiting Scholar United States Studies Centre

Charles Edel is a senior fellow and visiting scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Previously, he was associate professor of strategy and policy at the US Naval College, and served on the US Secretary of State’s policy planning staff from 2015 to 2017. In that role, he advised Secretary of State John Kerry on political and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

Charles worked at Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies as a Henry Luce Scholar and was also awarded the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. He is the author of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic. In addition to his scholarly publications, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, and various other outlets.

Charles holds a PhD in history from Yale University, and received a BA in classics from Yale College.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank those individuals who lent their time and expertise to this report. At the United States Studies Centre, Simon Jackman, Ashley Townshend, James Brown, Dougal Robinson, Brendan Thomas-Noone, Matilda Steward and Carla Owen along with two anonymous reviewers all provided comments and useful insights. Drew Sheldrick and Susan Beale did an expert job steering this report to publication. Special gratitude is extended to Jared Mondschein for his time, insights, and collaboration on this report.

The author would further like to thank the scholars who shared their insights discussing this paper, including Jeremi Suri, Jeffrey Engel, Melvyn Leffler, Fredrik Logevall, Stephen Sestanovich, William Inboden, Hal Brands, and James Wilson. The views, and errors, expressed are the author’s alone.

United States Studies Centre

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Phone: +61 2 9351 7249Email: [email protected] Twitter: @usscWebsite: ussc.edu.au

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