Stress test
As many people have been noticing, this situation exposes a certain flaw in the US Constitution – one that can be boiled down to: what happens if the president turns out to be a shameless crook?
CNN looks at how difficult it would or wouldn’t be for Trump to fire Mueller and then the constitutional issue.
Even if Trump cannot dispense with Mueller easily, the very idea that he might try exposes an inherent flaw in the US Constitution’s design, says Harvard Law School Professor Noah R. Feldman.
Feldman points out that the president is ultimately in charge of law enforcement as the head of the executive branch — a structural arrangement that works just fine until the president or those close to him come under investigation.
So if the President tries to fire Mueller or gets him fired, “it would expose a deep flaw in constitutional design” says Feldman, because it shows the ability of the president to successfully block an investigation — not a sign of a democratic society.
Indeed not, as we are learning with ever-deepening horror. Somehow a massively and visibly corrupt man got elected president after losing the popular vote by a wide margin, and now surprise surprise he’s acting the way a massively corrupt man would act, given nearly unfettered power.
Feldman says it’s a stress test. So far we’re failing it.
On the other hand, of course, you don’t want to make it too easy to dump a president, because then unscrupulous ideologues (*cough* the GOP *cough*) would be constantly impeaching democratically elected presidents. Look what happened to Bill Clinton.
I don’t know what the answer is.
An answer could be to have laws on what newly-elected presidents have to do before their inaugurations, or else face automatic impeachment. Simple things like divesting from businesses, things that were just the norm until six goddamn months ago.
Of course, that only works if the legislature is functioning…
Seth, I think they should also have to pass an ethics test, and a basic 7th grade civics test. If they don’t know that China is very old, or that other countries don’t put America first, they are not yet mature enough to be president, and need to be retained in the 7th grade.
Laudable though the sentiments for the removal of the don are… I haven’t seen any discussion of the alternative: President Pence. Which is worse?