Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Lawfare has little use for President Trump’s “modern Presidency,” nor comparisons to earlier Presidents:
It also stands to reason that Trump would express his unhappiness with CNN by retweeting a bit of staged violence at a professional wrestling show. Edward Luce has recently written about the president’s fascination with this brand of entertainment, and he notes a change over time in the stylized drama offered the audience: “Good and evil were replaced with dramas based on nasty personal disputes.” This is how Trump perceives his conflict with the media, as he does other conflicts he encounters in his public role—nasty personal disputes, and to be portrayed as such to his public. The president’s response that he is defending against personal attacks on him invites the obvious answer he should appreciate: he’s president and they’re not.
The presidency as an institution, rather than as a vehicle for the incumbent’s exercise of personal will, runs on disciplined process. President Roosevelt’s fireside chats, his version of “intimate” dialogue with the public, passed through several drafts as they were “fact-checked and re-written six or more times by a team of secretaries, speechwriters, and press specialists.” Roosevelt worked hard for a personal connection with his audience, but he remained squarely within his official role, supported by advisers and staff. Roosevelt understood that he was discharging a public function, and his process reflected his sense of that responsibility. Contrast with this the early morning Trump tweet bursts: issued at will, notable for misspellings, and marked the occasional deletion of the message from the public record when he concludes he hit “send” in haste.
Trump remains an incurious man with little interest in how the responsibilities of government differ from that of business.
Which does lead to the thought that future Congressional and Presidential candidates should have to face that foundational question: Please detail the key differences between government and business.
