Last week brought a new round of cuts to longstanding federal programs and more pink slips for employees of various agencies and departments. And the Trump administration is trying to instill a new attitude among those who remain: Serve the president’s agenda, or don’t serve at all.
Critics of what President Trump is doing claim it will undermine democracy by draining the government of the expertise and independent judgment necessary to serve the people well. Excessive concentration of power in the presidency threatens the rights and liberties necessary in a democratic political system.
But those who defend the administration’s efforts also do so in the name of democracy. For them, democracy is well served by a disciplined and accountable government. The people, they argue, are entitled to know who is responsible for what the government does.
These contrasting visions of democratic life that have been in play during the first month of President Trump’s second term have venerable roots in the American experience. Right now, the balance tilts in favor of the critics.
The relentless drive to ensure loyalty to the president’s agenda has reached areas where expertise and independence serve democratic purposes. That drive is tethered to a view of presidential authority and its limits that is hard to square with the vision of the people who wrote the Constitution.
But the problem of executive overreach is not unique to the Trump administration. Indeed, American history has been characterized by a recurring cycle of presidents who seek to expand the boundaries of presidential prerogative, followed by presidents who prefer to delegate authority and concern themselves with only the most significant policy questions.
To take but one example, think of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As University of North Carolina professor emeritus William Leuchtenburg argues, “Under FDR, the American federal government assumed new and powerful roles in the nation’s economy, in its corporate life, and in the health, welfare, and well-being of its citizens. … (B)y embracing an activist fiscal policy after 1937, the government assumed responsibility for smoothing out the rough spots in the American economy.”
“Under FDR’s leadership,” Leuchtenberg continues, “the president’s duties grew to encompass not only those of the chief executive — as implementer of policy — but also chief legislator—as drafter of policy. … With enactment of the Executive Reorganization bill in 1939, FDR changed the shape of the White House forever. In sum, President Roosevelt greatly increased the responsibilities of his office.”
Niall Ferguson, a British historian who writes about the United States, reminds us that “many of the distinctive features of the modern federal government date from FDR’s New Deal.” Leuchtenberg agrees: “He may have done more during those twelve years to change American society and politics than any of his predecessors in the White House, save Abraham Lincoln.”
Almost eight years after FDR’s death, Dwight David Eisenhower became president, with a very un-FDR-like sense of what the chief executive should do and demand. The historian Chester Pach writes that in the 1950s he was “scorned … as a ‘do-nothing’ president.”
Today, Pach argues, “Historians now appreciate that Eisenhower recognized the political advantages of working behind the scenes to deal with controversial issues, using his ‘hidden hand’ to guide policy while allowing subordinates to take any credit — as well as the political heat.”
But no one would say that Ike, as he was called, had the kind of impact on the White House or the executive branch that FDR did. That was not the way he saw his role.
In fact, many thought the five-star general would be the servant of the federal bureaucracy, not its master. President Harry Truman, his predecessor, was one of them. He quipped about his successor, “He’ll sit here (at his desk in the Oval Office), and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that Trump is the FDR of our time — far from it. In a December 2020 op-ed, June Hopkins and Stephen Seufert called Trump “the anti-FDR.”
As Ferguson has observed, “The way to think about Trump 2.0 is as the New Deal reversed. If FDR began the vast expansion of federal agencies that continued in the 1960s and 1970s, [Trump] is attempting to turn back the clock: to shrink the federal bureaucracy with a barrage of presidential decrees.”
And although FDR stretched the limits of executive authority, it is hard to imagine him saying that Article II gave him the right to do whatever he wanted, or quoting the French Emperor Napolean Bonaparte, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
Indeed, it is sometimes hard to figure out to figure out whether Trump thinks the president has independent authority to make or interpret laws, that he is immune from the reach of otherwise valid laws, or both.
What we do know is that he intends to bend the federal bureaucracy to his will. Neither he nor others in his administration are trying to hide that fact.
He is willing to do so even if it comes at a cost to the expertise and competence of the people who staff agencies and departments and who, because of that expertise, serve the American people well.
On Feb. 18, the president issued an executive order in which he flatly said: “Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests all executive power in the president, meaning that all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision.” And from his first days back in the White House, he has made clear that even the Justice Department is covered by that understanding.
Recall that when the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, directed prosecutors to drop the federal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, he was open about his reason for doing so. As the New York Times reports, Bove said that “the desire to throw out the charges was not based on the case’s legal merits. The case …was impeding the mayor’s ability to aid Mr. Trump’s program of mass deportation.”
The Feb. 18 executive order directed all agencies including the “so-called independent agencies to (1) submit draft regulations for White House review … except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve; and (2) consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans, and the White House will set their performance standards.”
FDR would be envious. Trump’s order makes it clear that this president no longer accepts that any agencies “exist outside of the federal executive branch,” previous understandings and respect for expertise notwithstanding.
At the end of the day, the president may ensure that everyone knows where the buck stops and can therefore hold him accountable. But the cost of doing so is steep.
As Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks says, “Democracy … is unsustainable without competence at every level.” She explains, democracy requires “skill and efficacy” but also “judgment, humility and empathy.”
That is a lesson for all of us to learn, including those who have the privilege of serving this country in its highest offices.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Amherst College.
