Understanding a New Presidency in the Age of Trump. Joseph A. Pika
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Название: Understanding a New Presidency in the Age of Trump

Автор: Joseph A. Pika

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика

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isbn: 9781544308227

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СКАЧАТЬ stone—and the first impressions of “Washingtonians,” as well as the wider public, are hard to shake. Indeed, the focus on the first hundred days reflects a maxim that most presidential observers agree upon: it is important for new administrations to hit the ground running. As political scientist James P. Pfiffner explains, presidents “want to take advantage of the ‘mandate’ from the voters and create a ‘honeymoon’ with Congress.” Early victories in implementing their policy goals may provide momentum for additional victories. “This desire to move fast is driven by the awareness that power is fleeting.”47

      Donald Trump, as a candidate, himself set a specific marker for early accomplishment. In a signed “contract with the American voter” released in October 2016, Trump said that “on November 8, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan” comprised of administrative, legislative, and even constitutional change. Some of the actions, the contract said, would be pursued “on the first day of my term of office.”48

      As president, Trump continued to tout his achievements in the context of a short temporal window. At a campaign-style rally in Nashville, Tennessee in mid-March 2017, he claimed that “we have done far more, I think maybe more than anybody’s done in this office in 50 days. That I can tell you.” A month later, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he told a crowd that “no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days.” He offered a similar tribute relative to the standard landmark: “I truly believe that the first 100 days of my administration has been just about the most successful in our country’s history.”49

      In light of these promises and claims, it is worth reviewing the actions and achievements of the new administration during the first hundred days—tracking the legislative, administrative, and public presidencies.

      The Legislative Presidency

      As noted by Pfiffner, presidents often seek to move quickly in the legislative sphere, hoping to take advantage of a honeymoon period in which members of Congress are deferential to the presumed mandate achieved by the president in the election just past. The Trump “contract” listed ten bills (as well as an additional constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress) to be introduced in the first hundred days of his administration. These included measures to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, raise tariffs, crack down on illegal immigration, lower taxes, and “clean up corruption.” However, the contract had little in the way of policy details, and the president’s first address before a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017—well received but long on generalities and short on specific measures—did little to clarify his agenda. The competing agendas of the different power centers in what would prove to be an exceptionally chaotic White House made it even more difficult to rank presidential priorities.50

      Photo 5 An activist in New York City holds a sign protesting the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare.” Trump had promised reform of the ACA during his campaign; but its proposed replacements have faced a rocky road in Congress and in the court of public opinion.

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      Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

      Trump chose Marc Short (who had previously served as a legislative aide to Mike Pence and as president of the Koch Brothers’ political fund Freedom Partners) to be his Director of Legislative Affairs in the White House, but the president’s impetuous style and the lack of clarity as to who was in charge made life difficult for Short and his office (itself not fully staffed until March 22).51 Trump did have one clear early legislative victory: the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016. According to Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court is shared between the executive and legislative branches; the president nominates individuals to serve on the Court, but those nominations are subject to the “Advice and Consent of the Senate.” In other words, the Senate has the power to confirm or reject nominees.

      After the Senate confirmed Gorsuch by a 54–45 vote on April 7, 2017, Trump bragged (correctly) that he was the first president to fill an open Supreme Court seat in the first hundred days since Chester A. Arthur in 1881. However, Trump neglected to note that it is highly unusual for a president to take office with a vacancy on the Court; the vacancy existed only because Republicans had taken the extraordinary step of refusing even to consider Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the seat.52 In fact, filling a vacancy within any hundred-day period—even the first—is not a particularly significant feat, comparatively speaking. Prior to Gorsuch, whose confirmation process took 66 days in all, the average length of time required to confirm, reject, or withdraw a Supreme Court nominee was a mere 25 days. Only two successful nominees in the entire twentieth century took longer than 100 days to be confirmed: Woodrow Wilson’s nomination of Louis Brandeis in 1916 (125 days) and Dwight Eisenhower’s nomination of Potter Stewart in 1959 (108 days, although Stewart already sat on the Court by way of a “recess appointment”).53

      The confirmation of Gorsuch also required a controversial Senate rules change. Although Democrats had eliminated the filibuster as a tool to block both lower federal court and executive branch appointments when they controlled the Senate in 2013, they left in place the opportunity to filibuster Supreme Court nominees.54 When employed, the filibuster would require sixty votes (rather than a simple majority of fifty-one) to confirm—a threshold that Gorsuch could not reach. Thus, the 2017 Republicans followed the Democrats’ lead and took away the opportunity to use filibusters against Supreme Court nominees.55 This ensured Gorsuch’s confirmation and eased the way for future nominees (see Section IV). Trump later urged the Senate to abolish the filibuster altogether so that his legislative agenda could advance more easily, but that idea had little initial support among lawmakers.56

      Despite his victory in securing the Gorsuch confirmation, and despite having the luxury of Republican control of both houses of Congress, President Trump did not secure passage of any of the ten bills he had promised in his contract to enact during the first hundred days. The contract’s proposed constitutional amendment to impose term limits did not gain any traction either; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the idea out of hand before Trump even took office, while House Speaker Paul Ryan offered tepid support for the concept but took no action on the proposal. Indeed, of the ten bills promised in the contract, only the health care repeal-and-replace measure was even introduced within one hundred days.

      Health care reform served as a useful indicator of the difficulty the new administration’s agenda faced. In October 2016, then-candidate Trump had promised that fixing the health care system was “going to be so easy.” Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, House Republicans had voted more than sixty times to repeal it, in part or in whole.57 Only a Democratic Senate and, after the 2014 midterm elections, President Obama’s veto pen, had kept the law in place.

      Now, however, Republicans controlled House, Senate, and White House, and new President Trump had repeatedly called for the repeal of “Obamacare,” which he termed a “disaster.” “Everything is broken about it,” he insisted. “Everything.”58 СКАЧАТЬ