The image above accompanied a "Guest Essay" column in The New York Times. The column was written by Jack Goldsmith, and was titled as follows in the online version: "We Have to Deal With Presidential Power." Goldsmith currently serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. This means that he does know something about the Constitution, and how it has been, and is being, interpreted by the Supreme Court.
Goldsmith's point is that we should not think that our current political problems - and the dangers that go along with them - are simply just a "personal" problem. Our current president is, absolutely, a "danger to democracy," and to the kind of democratic self-government that is the amazing inheritance that we have received from the American Revolution.
That said, Goldsmith makes the case that we have a "systemic" problem, not just a "personal" problem - and I think Goldsmith is right. If he is, that means that we need to do something beyond just denouncing the president, name-calling him a fascist, and assuming that everything will be just fine, and that democratic self-government will be restored when the "MAGA hats" no longer have our current president to carry the flag.
Here, in a short statement from Goldsmith, is how he describes the challenges ahead:
There is a clear case for imposing substantial limitations on the presidency. This effort must take us back not to the day before Mr. Trump’s second inauguration but rather back to when Congress and not just the president played a vital role in domestic policy and when law and norms checked presidents from grabbing everything they could in the short run.
As you will note, and as Goldsmith makes explicit, the path to necessary reform leads through Congress. "Representative" self-government means that we must mobilize our political power to insist that our elected "representatives" actually do "represent" our views in Congress.
As someone has said, those who know that we are in a genuine crisis of democratic self-government might start thinking about "running for something." We are not going to have "self-government" unless we get directly involved in government, ourselves!
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