“He’s the head of the country,” President Trump said Friday of Kim Jong Un. “And I mean, he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
Trump later said he was joking with these seemingly admiring comments about Kim and his regime, and the last sentence seems to fit this claim. But even in jest, these sentiments are out of place and regrettable, for two reasons.
FIrst, Kim’s brutality, masked though it may temporarily be, remains one of the world’s great horrors. Second, the aggrandizement of the presidency is no laughing matter either.
As the leader of the free world, Trump should be careful about how much respect, and, even more, how much affection he shows Kim. He is taking a risk to court him at all, but it is justifiable because the world wants a safe East Asia, free of nuclear threats. To get that, it’s even willing to deal with someone as odious as the pudgy tyrant of Pyongyang.
But Trump should not lose sight of the realities of North Korea’s personality cult. An entire country, 25 million people, is denied fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, thought, and movement, and deprived of basic sustenance, because their regime is incompetent and murderous.
A few North Koreans escape and tell their stories, and the family of Otto Warmbier, who died a few days after being released by the despot, can attest to the true nature of the Kim regime. North Koreans sit up and pay attention to Kim and display love for him not because of his “strong” leadership but because he will kill them if they don’t.
Trump’s words redound not only across the international stage but also within the U.S. He has often and controversially expressed admiration for dictators and, like most past presidents, he also talks about and defends an expansive version of his own constitutional powers.
Rather than follow his predecessors in bulking up presidential power, Trump should ditch the fantasies of amassing greater executive power, and look instead to the Founders’ view of the executive’s role.
It is healthy that no one man or woman be indispensable under the constitutional system in which Trump serves.
In urging his fellow New Yorkers to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton argued that the president’s powers are in most ways less than those of the governor of New York. This is less true today than it ought to be.
As President Barack Obama’s experience demonstrated, it is healthy for the republic that presidents find themselves impotent and frustrated, especially presidents who are big on change and impatient for the processes of law. Having spent the first year of his presidency clearing away various Obama-era executive overreaches, Trump should understand this better than most people.
If he wants to leave a more robust legacy than Obama did, he should help restore congressional power, even at the expense of his own office. That way, his predecessors will not be able to undo his entire presidency in a matter of months.
More importantly, a president who governs with a light touch, and who stays out of the way so that his fellow citizens can thrive, will be remembered much more fondly than any strong and revered dictator.
