Of walls, shutdowns and bargaining: The importance of a president's professional reputation

Time for a standard reference. Yes, I make this one all the time, and so does every political scientist, but that's because it matters. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power. A president, according to Neustadt, relies not on formal institutional power because the president's institutional power is not that strong. Instead, the president must rely on bargaining with Congress. To do so, the president must carefully guard his (sorry, Hillary) professional reputation, as Neustadt put it.

What is the president's professional reputation? He must have a reputation for dealing honestly and following through on promises. Say something, and people need to know that your word is your bond.

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OK, are you back? Have you finished? Do you need another laughing break? I'll wait. That's the cool thing about reading, isn't it? You can pause, and the text doesn't go anywhere. So, let's just let that...

Never mind. I just needed another laughing break. That, after all, is my point. Donald Trump is a liar and a cheat, and everyone in Washington, D.C., except a few feckless c...ongresspeople (HT: Samantha Bee) who probably spend every penny they earn on the Home Shopping Network buying Stephen Miller's spray-on hair knows it. Donald Trump's entire career has been built on lying and breaking deals. And even that wasn't enough for him, because he'd be broke without all of that money he funneled from Daddy.

This is conspicuously important for Trump's "wall" for a couple of reasons. First, as I mentioned yesterday, the Democrats had offered Trump a wall funding-for-DACA deal, and he walked away from it. Second, he said he'd agree to fund the government without wall funding, until some right-wing media types goaded him into the shutdown. Third, remember that Nieto phone call? Remember how he admitted that the wall didn't matter? He admitted that it was a bullshit stunt, for all practical purposes.

All of this adds up to one thing. Trump can't be trusted to deal honestly. Of course, we knew that, but what does that mean as far as shutdown negotiations go?

It means two things. First, suppose Pelosi and Trump actually did agree to something like a wall-for-DACA deal this time around. Would Trump back out of it again before signing the legislation? Given Trump's inability to stick to anything, he might! So, from Pelosi's perspective, that's a problem trying to negotiate with Trump, which hurts Trump's ability to negotiate because it takes away Pelosi's incentive to bother. Why offer him anything if he can't be trusted to follow through? That was Neustadt's point.

It gets worse, though. Suppose Trump followed through and signed a wall-for-DACA bill. Would he then turn around and screw the Democrats on implementation?

Almost certainly. In case you haven't noticed, he's got this thing about unilateral executive power on implementation, and he'd look for ways to avoid implementing the DACA part in good faith. So, from Pelosi's perspective, even if Trump put his signature on the bill, he'd still look for ways to weasel out of the deal. This is the problem with having such a bad professional reputation, by Neustadt's definition.

Nobody with a brain trusts Donald Trump. I have a lot of names for him, but one of my stand-by's is, "the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie." He doesn't know how to stick to an agreement. Worse, he gets special pleasure from breaking them. He has done so much damage to his professional reputation that Pelosi can't deal with him, particularly by giving in to extortion.

Now, though, we must also address the question of Neustadt's fundamental argument with regard to Trump. Neustadt says that presidents rely on bargaining because their institutional powers just aren't that strong. What we are likely going to see is Trump use the "national emergency" stunt to end the shutdown. That will allow him to avoid having to bargain, and use unilateral executive power. To be sure, this will be the very definition of executive over-reach. What does this mean, from the Neustadt perspective?

Two observations. First, Congress gave the president the authority to declare national emergencies, so to the degree that there is unilateral executive power, it was granted by Congress, and there is a hole in Neustadt's argument because the president can have more authority than Neustadt allows. Terry Moe has made some arguments along these lines. However, Trump using the national emergency declaration when there is clearly no emergency to steal funding from properly appropriated projects to build a stupid wall that Mexico was supposed to fund because Congress refused to fund it when he asked... that's probably not really what Moe meant.

On the other hand, who's gonna stop him? No one. Democrats will try. They'll file suit, but the courts will likely say they don't want to get involved in a partisan inter-branch thing, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch will have Trump's back, and Republicans will flip as soon as a Democrat gets the White House. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a SCOTUS ruling that looked like Bush v. Gore-- don't use this for precedent because we know our "reasoning" is partisan garbage and we don't want it coming back to bite us. Don't tell me that can't happen because, um... Bush v. Gore.

So, professional reputation. How much does it matter? Well, if Trump had one that didn't live in the most disgustingly clogged toilet in the worst frat house in the country, he could cut a deal with Pelosi. Wall funding for DACA. But, he already walked away from that deal, and his reputation makes it such that Democrats can't trust him to engage in bargaining anyway. Trump doesn't know the meaning of the phrase, "good faith." He thinks it is a synonym for "sucker." As in... All of that hurts his ability to get anything from the Democrats legislatively. By Neustadt's argument, that should make him, um... impotent.

Then again, maybe we should remember that the formal powers of the president are harder to define. Declaring a national emergency? How big a power is that, and what are its limits? Testing and exceeding legal limits is what Donald Trump does.

So, I return to yesterday's nickname for Donald J. Trump: Shiva, Destroyer of Constitutional Governance.