Birth of the butterfly regime
Trump should not take any power until he can accept all the power. Once elected President, he should present the legislative, judicial and administrative states with a choice: either they acknowledge his manifest democratic mandate to Constitutional executive authority and allow him to serve as a Constitutional chief executive; or, he leaves the White House, and calls his people into the street. He will return only on their backs—to serve as a revolutionary chief executive. Does anyone want this?
The greater the credibility of this threat—and he may call demonstrations just to demonstrate it—the greater the probability that it will never have to happen. But Trump, on the day of his inauguration, must both declare a state of emergency, and display his full democratic power. It will be viscerally clear to everyone in the country that this is something different—the old regime is at an end and can never return. Call it a revolution if you like! Every revolution starts by convincing itself.
Naturally, if there is a bloc of Trump ninjas in the legislature, it is much easier to make the revolution as legal as possible. FDR’s tame rubberstamp Congress was a huge thing. Ideally, the regime’s legality is unquestionable. But what really matters is that this democratic revolution either happens, or does not happen—no in-betweens.
There is another possibility: Trump loses the Presidency, but the Trump machine wins a substantial bloc—even a majority—in the legislature.
This is no problem at all. Every regime on the American pattern can be governed by the prime-ministerial system—through its legislature. Since the executive branch is in fact the legislative branch, it can be taken over by capturing the legislature—creating an American equivalent of the British prime-ministerial system.
And often, the power of even a minority bloc is such that it can dictate the behavior of the rest of the party. Issues are not the concern of the bloc—power is. The goal of its winning legislative candidates is to capture authority—over first committees, then rules, then all of legislation. There is a possibility that this will be easier than it looks.
Once Trump controls the legislature from outside, at least according to today’s bizarre precedents, he is more lawfully in possession of executive power than if he is elected President—fact. Constitutional law is pretty cool.
Delegation
Finally, once proper legal authorization exists, Trump takes over the executive branch and appoints a CEO. As we said at the beginning, he is not this CEO.
FDR was a lot like Trump in some ways. He was intensely charismatic, insanely witty, and had the attention span of a fly. But there was one difference—FDR was a scion of one of America’s great families.
As a born aristocrat, FDR was confident. That meant he could delegate. That meant that although he was anything but a manager, he could find competent people to manage for him, whom he wouldn’t micromanage.
A Trump who was confident enough to act as America’s chairman of the board, not America’s CEO—who could pick an amazing CEO, ready, willing and able to take unlimited executive authority over all federal, state and local agencies, corporations and institutions—could truly make America great again.
Or so I believe. But fortunately or not, this Trump just doesn’t exist. So it will have to stay an academic exercise…
