The New York Times op-ed attributed to a senior administration official revealing a vast resistance to President Trump from within his inner circle is extraordinary in many ways, but it’s worth pausing to consider the anti-democratic implications of what is being described.
“Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the op-ed reads. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
That last line — “we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” unsettled me when I first read it, and remains hard to digest. As a conservative, I opposed Trump in part because of my fears that he would destroy institutional norms, and I now fear that institutional norms are being obliterated in the name of stopping him.
[Also read: 7 points on the anonymous New York Times ‘resistance’ op-ed]
The Constitution presents many institutional checks and balances that make it difficult for any president to do whatever he wants. The president can be held accountable by Congress and the courts. Every two years, the people get to vote on every member of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate; every four years, they get the choice of electing a new president. The First Amendment protects the press’ right to expose wrongdoing and people’s right to protest actions by the administration.
In addition, the president has advisers and Cabinet officials who help him run the executive branch. But while I would hope that those advising the president would have the courage to stand up to him when they disagree and try to persuade him to pursue a different course when warranted, what the op-ed is describing is something quite different.
The phrase “we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” is a declaration that unelected officials are usurping executive authority from the man who actually was elected to execute the nation’s laws. This isn’t about institutional or constitutional checks and balances, it’s about individuals assuming powers they were never granted. They aren’t merely making a policy case to Trump. The op-ed suggests they are acting on their own against his expressed wishes.
This isn’t just one official. According to the op-ed, “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
This is also consistent with the account given in Bob Woodward’s book, which portrays a vast resistance among Trump’s inner circle, and even depicts former economic adviser Gary Cohn as stealing a letter off of Trump’s desk so that he wouldn’t withdraw from a trade agreement.
This presents a real challenge to the American system. There’s no check on the judgment of unelected administration officials, or any transparency. Through this anonymous op-ed and hundreds of anonymous quotes in books and news accounts, officials have tried to assure us that they’re saving the world from Trump. But how are we to trust them to draw distinctions between actions they may take to prevent some true national security crisis (like an escalating nuclear war) as opposed to actions they take because they simply disagree with Trump on given policy matters?
In Woodward’s book, he notes internal complaints over Trump’s rhetoric on trade and questioning of American troop presence in the Korean peninsula. Yet among the many reasons Trump was elected, one was that he rejected the economic and foreign policies that had been accepted as gospel by elites.
The American people elected somebody who would question the necessity of keeping troops in Korea after 70 years — or who would be willing to pull us out of trade deals he argued were ripping us off. If voters wanted a conventional Republican, they would have elected one.
Whatever my personal disagreements with Trump on policy, and my hope that people surrounding him will talk him out of hastily retreating from the world stage or engaging in a trade war, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of unelected officials simply ignoring the elected president or using outright subterfuge to get around his policy choices.
Anything that is done in the name of thwarting Trump must also be considered in terms of what sort of precedent it sets when Trump is no longer in office. It’s troubling to imagine a future administration in which officials will feel emboldened in ignoring the orders of the president simply because they have a different views on policy.
Senior administration officials may believe they are saving the world by protecting us from full on Trumpism, but in reality, they could be doing more harm to democratic institutions.
