Reading the anonymous New York Times op-ed written by a current Trump administration official and published on Wednesday, we should be alarmed at the flippancy with which the writer posits invoking the 25th Amendment.
The writer, which the New York Times inadvertently identified as a male, argues, “Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.”
Sorry, but even if one assumes that Trump is inherently unstable and that it is right and proper for Trump officials “to steer” the president beyond his will, the idea that the 25th Amendment should be considered a rational response to Trump’s presidency is outrageous. While the president has blurted out some extremely odd comments on matters of national concern, he is the elected chief executive of the United States. Elected, that is, by the people in furtherance of carrying on our democratic government.
Nothing we know of that Trump has done would justify the extraordinary intervention of an effort to remove him from office. Nor do we have any evidence that the judiciary is incapable of constraining the president’s excess action.
On the contrary, on matters of foreign policy, the president’s more extreme impulses have been invariably tempered by his choice of better policies. Congress and the judiciary are also acting in furtherance of their responsibility to balance the executive’s power.
Moreover, as is clear in the writing of the 25th Amendment, the Constitution grants the executive great latitude to retain office, absent compelling and sustained countervailing concerns. Indeed, in the final instance of the 25th Amendment’s application, it is still a democratic body (Congress) which gets to decide whether the president retains office.
Ultimately, we elect presidents and then we must live with them under the law. If we believe in constitutional democracy, it would be outrageous to invoke the 25th Amendment unless Trump were attempting to start a nuclear war or to declare himself the Sun God Ra (and/or order the colonization of Earth’s inner core with a tortoise army).
