Prediction can be hard. I often tell people to read Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment, on why predictions go right or wrong, and here's your obligatory reference for the day.
Some predictions, though, really aren't hard, and people who get them wrong have no excuse whatsoever. That brings me to Trump's decision to declare a "national emergency" in order to steal congressionally appropriated funds from other projects to build a few small portions of his silly wall.
OH NO! THERE'S A NATIONAL EMERGENCY! EVERYBODY FREAK OUT! DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH BOTTLED WATER STOCKPILED? GAS UP THE CAR AND HEAD FOR THE HILLS!
No hills here in Northeastern Ohio. Oh, well.
Anyway, yes, this was obvious, and yes, I saw this coming pretty much from the time Trump floated the idea. As soon as the idea was floated, on January 5, I posted that the emergency declaration was a high likelihood with a probability that I couldn't estimate. Basically, take this seriously, but I needed time to process the matter because it was so wacko. How much time did I need? Roughly 48 hours, by the time stamps on the posts on this blog. (Less, really, but that's what you can tell from the time stamps on the blog). On January 7, I stated in rather certain terms, that Trump would use the emergency declaration. It was a short post, and it holds up well. Trump wasn't going to get the money from the House, and he hates losing. The "emergency declaration" stunt gave him a way to cheat. Trump hates losing and loves cheating, not just because cheating gives him a way to "win," but because he enjoys cheating for the sake of cheating. Trump enjoys dominance displays, and cheating is, itself, a dominance display. So, for the same reason that he couldn't accept losing, he had to cheat. It was the only way this thing could possibly go.
And let's be clear here. The "national emergency" declaration is cheating. There is no emergency. In Trump's press conference, he said, "I didn't need to do this." Illegal immigration has not been on any kind of increase, illegal immigrants don't commit crimes at a high rate, drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry rather than across unguarded portions of the border, and y'all know the rest. There is no emergency, and even if there were, the wall would do nothing. Trump knows it. Remember his phone call to Nieto. Trump, regarding the wall: "Believe it or not, this is the least important thing we are talking about..."
Article I.
Yes, this is a straight-up violation of Article I. And that's precisely why it appeals to Trump. He wants to do it because it's cheating.
Think of it this way. The national emergency declaration was heroin that someone left lying on a table in front of a junkie. What did you think was going to happen?
OK, so that's my explanation about why this was so easy to see, along with some general ranting. If it was such an easy call, why wasn't everyone making it? At this point, I'll refer you to my January 12 post. That post contained one of my favorite digs at Trump, but also, I think, implicitly gets at the core of why others failed to understand the inevitability of the emergency declaration.
Donald J. Trump. Shiva, Destroyer of Constitutional Governance. He is become death. Destroyer of democracy.
Yeah, this is bad, and that will be the topic for tomorrow's post, but for today, let's think through the distinction between what I was writing a month ago, and how other commentators see politics these days.
The gist of my post was that we needed to acknowledge how far from normal the political system already was because of a President who cares not at all about policy for its own sake (see, for example, the Nieto call referenced above), but exclusively about his own power and dominance displays. If I only care about taking from you, then you and I cannot bargain, and this gets at the core problem with Trump. Everything for Trump is zero-sum. The Art of the Deal is total bullshit. He has fetishized the word, "deal," but he doesn't believe in the concept of engaging in deal-making because he sees everything in zero-sum terms, and evaluates his own gain entirely by your loss. That's why he has never successfully negotiated anything with Congress, or any other country, as President. The tax cut negotiations were done entirely without him, NAFTA is just NAFTA renamed, and everything else he has tried has just been a mess. He's just a con-man, and while he can con some rubes into signing up for Trump University or watching a tv show in which he plays the role of "businessman," he doesn't actually engage in true deal-making.
That means we are in an entirely different world, politically. Accepting that reality, and accepting the reality that the President doesn't just violate norms, but revels in the destruction of constitutional governance because he is motivated more by dominance displays than any actual policy goals requires an entirely different mentality. It took me about 48 hours to shift my perspective. Why? The national emergency declaration is beyond insane. It is such a clear violation of Article I, and so far beyond anything we have seen, as a violation of separation of powers, that anyone thinking that we exist in a system bound by constitutional principles, law, norms, or anything like that, will have a hard time wrapping their brains around the notion that it could happen.
We have seen presidents violate the Constitution in a variety of ways, and in moral terms, let's be blunt about the scale here. This is nothing compared to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, or some of the worst historical atrocities. I always try to remind readers to keep scale in mind, and the scale here is penny-ante. In terms of theories of governance, though, at least FDR could hide behind wartime powers. That shouldn't have comforted anyone put in the internment camps, which was way worse than a few stupid miles of a stupid wall that won't do anything, but at least there was some legal theory there, for whatever that's worth to anyone not interred. The sheer insanity, brazenness, dishonesty, and total contempt for Article I today is about as bad as it gets.
In order to accept that this was inevitable, one had to understand that we simply weren't operating in a political system in which the Constitution applied. We aren't. The Constitution is dead.
The question is whether the Constitution is a Monty Python parrot, or a Princess Bride "Man In Black." Once upon a time, the Constitution had lovely plumage, but when Trump mentioned the idea of a national emergency declaration, all I saw was the Constitution's foot nailed to the damned perch. Maybe Miracle Max can do something here, but I am formally registering a complaint.
The point is that I saw the nail-to-the-perch prior to Trump talking about a national emergency declaration. I periodically post about Bright Line Watch, which periodically surveys the public, along with some political scientists about the state of democracy in the US. My answers when I fill out their survey are somewhat different from other political scientists. On any one individual factor, I tend to rate the US similarly to my colleagues. I differ in assessments of some questions. For example, I do research on campaign finance, so unlike some of my colleagues, I am aware that the research on the subject shows very little impact of campaign contributions on how elected officials behave. Yes, really. Mostly, though, my answers on specific questions resemble those of my colleagues, but I give far more pessimistic assessments of the US overall. The reason, as I have explained here, is that there has been a complete and total breakdown of checks and balances.
Here's the dirty secret of the Constitution. It doesn't actually create checks and/or balances. It creates the possibility of checks and balances. However, if one party decides that checks and balances are no longer a thing, then... they're no longer a thing. The Republican Party has made a strategic decision not to engage in any oversight over the executive branch, precisely because the executive branch is a) under Republican control, and b) has clearly engaged in wrongdoing that would hurt the party electorally if fully exposed. Any examination of the process that led to the "Nunes memo," and other shenanigans should fully reveal that the GOP has shut down the concept of checks and balances. They object to the concept of checks or balances on Donald J. Trump. And consistently with what I wrote last month, Republican opposition to the emergency declaration is already starting to disappear. McConnell used to oppose the idea. No so much anymore!
And once you accept that checks and balances had already been killed off by the GOP, why wouldn't the emergency declaration happen? But, accepting that checks and balances have already been shut down is a hard thing to do. I'm in the minority here. Political scientists, pundits... it is a hard thing to say that checks and balances have been shut down and simply no longer operate.
Predicting that the emergency declaration was inevitable depended on whether or not one already accepted that the constitutional order had broken down because it is a stunt so far outside constitutional boundaries that you can't accept it as a prediction unless you already see the constitutional order as having broken down.
I do.
Shiva, Destroyer of Constitutional Governance, has already broken so much of the political order that the constraints that would have prevented it simply aren't there anymore. Those constraints are a general belief, across both parties, that there are legal constraints on the president.
The position of the Republican Party does not accept the premise that there are legal constraints on Donald J. Trump, and it should have been clear long before the shutdown that this was true.
And anyone who didn't see that hasn't been paying attention.
Or has been in denial.
What next? That will be the subject of tomorrow's post.
