National Review republishes a column by Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon which includes a throw-off line he may regret:
The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States. The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S. Constitution — its checks, its balances, its dispersion of power, its protection of individual rights. Donald Trump was elected to serve four years as the chief executive of this system. Whether you like it or not.
The second system is comprised of those elements not expressly addressed by the Founders. This is the permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts. This is the government of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who, far from comprising the “least dangerous branch,” now presume to think they know more about America’s national security interests than the man elected as commander in chief.
I bolded the part that I nearly burst out laughing at. Did this guy really buy it when then-candidate Trump declared himself much smarter than the generals who run the wars we stumble into?
But, more importantly, we elect Presidents as managers and leaders – not deep experts on national security, foreign relations, and all the other responsibilities of the Executive. We expect them to hire experts to take care of those areas. We do expect a certain familiarity with all those issues – it’s almost staggering how much – but I don’t expect them to be deep experts. Indeed, an election selects the person who best convinces the people who are geographically important (in our system, at least) that the general policies they support are best for the nation.
That’s a far piece from being a national security expert.
So, yes, some of the judiciary may in fact know more than the President. But, more importantly, they appear to think Trump didn’t follow the proper legal rules when he created the travel ban executive order – me, I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll defer to those experts. So this has the tone of the outraged Trump partisan, not the sort of sober analysis we need.
