The Next Big Challenge: Trump-Proofing the Presidency

[babylonsister]

The Next Big Challenge: Trump-Proofing the Presidency
By John Cassidy
December 29, 2020


snip//


Even if the voting system were retooled, however, that wouldn’t preclude the election of a demagogue who was more popular than Trump. So, whatever voting system we use, it’s imperative that we strengthen other types of defenses against an authoritarian leader, and, here again, there are a number of options available. To begin with, it’s vital to insure that no future President can get away with refusing to release their tax returns, which contain information about their financial obligations and other potential conflicts of interest. Until September, 2020, when the Times published an analysis of more than two decades of Trump’s tax data, which it had obtained, he had successfully hidden from voters the fact that, in the decade before he ran for office, he paid virtually nothing in federal income tax, partly because he secured a refund of $72.9 million in 2010, and that he had personally guaranteed more than three hundred million dollars of loans that will come due in the next four years.

By refusing to release his tax returns, Trump violated a Presidential norm that was established relatively recently. Richard Nixon instituted it in 1973, at the height of Watergate. “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook,” Nixon famously said. In the wake of Trump, statutory requirements are in order. David Cay Johnston, an investigative journalist who has written widely on Trump and his finances, thinks that Congress should amend the U.S. tax code to require the Internal Revenue Service to make public six years of tax returns and other tax information, including the returns for any majority-owned businesses, of anyone who files to run for President. “We may not be able to require a president to release his or her tax returns as a condition of taking office, but we can shift the duty to the IRS,” Johnston, who is now working on a third Trump book, wrote to me.

Another area that requires immediate congressional action is the ethics laws that are meant to deal with potential conflicts of interest. Currently, these statutes contain a huge loophole for the President and Vice-President—which Trump exploited when, on taking office, he refused to give up ownership of any of his businesses, including a new Trump International Hotel situated just a few blocks from the White House. Since then, the hotel has become a meeting spot for diplomats, lobbyists, and others seeking to ingratiate themselves with the President. In violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, arguably, it has accepted payments from foreign governments.

Back in 2018, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published an ethics-reform plan that could serve as the basis for future action. It called on Congress to create a legal requirement for the incoming President and Vice-President to divest any assets that created a potential conflict of interest. The group also proposed legislation that would mandate additional financial disclosures from Presidents and Vice-Presidents, limit contributions to Presidential Inaugurations and future Presidential libraries, strengthen existing anti-nepotism statutes, and require the full and prompt disclosure of White House visitor logs.

The group also noted that the problem isn’t just gaps in the ethics laws: it’s that existing statutes haven’t been properly enforced. A prime example is the Hatch Act of 1939, which bars federal employees, excepting only the President and Vice-President, from engaging in partisan politics, and prohibits the use of federal funds for political purposes. In June, 2019, the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that is supposed to insure compliance with the Hatch Act, recommended that Kellyanne Conway, a White House adviser, be fired because she had violated the statute on numerous occasions. Trump and Conway ignored the O.S.C.’s recommendation. “When we used to film George W. Bush, we had to go to all sorts of lengths to avoid breaking the law,” Stuart Stevens, a veteran Republican political consultant turned Never Trumper, told me. He said that the Trump Administration had brazenly conducted campaign “events using official government employees and official government sites. These are taxpayer-funded events.”

more...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-next-big-challenge-trump-proofing-the-presidency

[onecaliberal]

1. It's anti democratic authoritarians we need to protect from.

[Takket]

2. great article...........

these are all things that have upset me so much the last 4 years......... especially the hatch act. is a law really a law if the people who break it are the same people the decide if it should be enforced? that is an insane system. "wolf in charge of the hen house" level absurdity.

so is a system where a whistleblower can report something that an IG looks into, and the IG gets fired for looking into it, which is just doing their job. if the president can fire an IG, then is there really any such thing as oversight of Executive branch activities?????? what's to stop me from speeding every time i drive if i'm allowed to fire any cop that pulls me over?

[abqtommy]

3. To get the full benefit of protections, as we tRUMP-proof the presidency we also have to make sure

that no international or domestic person/group (like sPUTIN, Assange, Cambridge Analytica, social
media and other corrupt media entities, fascists, religious fanatics and more I'm sure) can adversely effect our political process. Let's never forget that tRUMP is and always has been a useful idiot put
in place to do the bidding of his powerful enablers.

As far as I'm concerned this focus on tRUMP is a well-planned distraction.

[gulliver]

4. It's not gonna save us from Republican sedition

Once they decide to mug, they're gonna mug. We're lucky this time in that it looks like some Republicans are holding the line on democracy.

The best answer is getting about 65% of the country reliably and enthusiastically on our side. We have that level of agreement for our policies. Also, we might be able to use Republican seditious behavior against them with voters. If everyone's winning (our job), then people won't be voting for boat rockers.

[tinrobot]

5. The problem with all of this is that new laws will be enforced by the DOJ.

Who controls the DOJ?

The President.