Should We Reconstitute The Office of President

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by Bill Formby

We need to rethink the current position of President of the United States in terms of absolute powers and applying for the job. We the people are the ones that are hiring a CEO, of sorts, to manage our country. Donald Trump has made it quite clear that we may well need to take a step back and put a leash on this dog that can be jerked back when necessary.

I would agree that the president needs a free hand to run the country but there needs to be a mechanism short of impeachment that can step in and say,

“Hell no, you cannot send your daughter who cannot pass a security check to South Korea as an emissary to discuss our North Korea policy.”

We have or are supposed to have a Secretary of State or an Ambassador to do that, or even a Secretary of Defense. The fact that you cannot select good staff, or that the staff is good but you aren’t is further proof that you should not be president.

For example, we have never had to have a specific law saying the POTUS could not have active relationships with businesses he or she still publicly owned but we now see that we do need a specific set of laws like that. We have long presumed that ordinary laws do not need to apply to the president.

Like nepotism, because we assumed that a person we put into the office of president would never put someone into a position of authority without knowing that such a person was knowledgeable about the job and would pass our security checks. But, obviously, we do need to have similar standards of laws applicable to the president as it does to career service employees.

Similarly, we have never had specific job requirements for the president like a working knowledge of how the government or a character assessment but we might want to rethink that also, and while we are at it we may want to lay out the terms of employment for employees of the president when it comes to openly criticizing individuals or public companies from a public forum as the current one has done. It seems that Donald Trump does not understand that words coming from the bully pulpit of the POTUS has far-reaching consequences.

Laws, you see, are only as good as those that enforce them. For example, both houses of Congress passed legislation for sanctions against Russia over a month and a half ago and Trump simply ignored it until now.

The only mechanism in place, apparently, to get the president to follow the law is to impeach him which is difficult even without the president’s party in power. All Trump has to do is to ignore Congress or the courts because he has the enforcement power under his control.

Read: Trump Won’t Quit! He’ll Just Start Campaigning Two-Years Early

He is allowed to rant and stomp his feet, lashing out at anyone he chooses and disrespect anything he chooses, anytime he chooses and there absolutely no consequences.

There likely is no one who has any self-respect who would work for someone like Donald Trump and this applies to a whole lot of his supporters.

Yeah, I am talking to you losers who stand and cheer about how he tells it like it is. If one of you worked for him you would be trying to kick his ass the very first time he cut loose on you.

But, it is OK because you will never get into a position for that to happen but it sounds tough when he is going off on someone else.

People, that is not how you run a business, a company, or a country. It is no way to treat people period. What is odd, though, is people that are out of his direct line of sight such as Steven Mnuchin, seem to believe that the U.S. Air Force is there for his personal use to the tune of $1 million in his first nine months on the job, rarely gets a mention by Trump.

Same thing for Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior despite having to have a special flag raised and lowered to announced his presence in the office and having commemorative coins minted with his likeness on them. Nada. Not a peep.

I do not think Ben Carson’s foray into government even needs discussing. At least he admits that he does not know what he is doing except buying expensive furniture before his agency is wiped out altogether.

Rick Perry, I think, is probably wandering around the Washington mall telling everyone that America’s nuclear programs are technically under his department. He was amazed to learn as Secretary of Energy he was responsible for nuclear material and waste storage, but he was able to find a lampshade worth $72 million for his office. He decided a couple of days later to return it because he got caught up in the competition of the cabinet secretaries in upgrading their offices. But, apparently, he stays out of Trump’s shit storms.

It really is as if someone took a wrecking ball and went through the government structure with the full intent of tearing it all to pieces. I do not understand why people cannot see this and see that it is slowly becoming that way. This is not something that if you ignore it it will simply go away. This situation will continue to get worse every day.

Everyone is saying that te will not fire the special prosecutor. Uh huh! How many of you thought you would see the President of these United States publicly and viciously attacking our intelligence system, our premiere law enforcement agency, our Attorney General, his own Secretary Of State , and have his daughter and son in law working on national policy when they could not even pass our standards for security clearance.

Folks, the United States government is a monster of an organization and it must be that way if it is going to serve its 340 million citizens, give or take a few. People rant about wanting to reduce the size of government which is not necessarily a bad idea but it must be done with a surgeon’s scalpel and not a double bladed axe. Most people do not even think about all of the services we get from the government and most of the time it works.

Years ago when I was doing research and consulting with police departments around the country there were many positive traits I absorbed from being around these police executives, but there was one I noticed that has stuck with me all these years.

That trait was to become unimportant to the day to day operations of the department. It did not matter how big the department was at the time. The only thing that did matter was that the executive had gotten his team to a point where everyone knew their jobs and knew they were appreciated. I remember one from Peoria saying,

“That once I got things in place, I just had to stay out of their way but be there when they needed me. My job was to get my people the resources they needed, keep the politicians off their backs, and do PR for them.”

That was a simple job. Of course, everyone knows that the chief does most of his work behind closed doors and quietly but liked to make people think he didn’t work hard at all.

About Post Author

Bill Formby

Bill Formby, aka William A. Formby, PhD, aka Lazersedge is a former Marine and a former police officer. He is a retired University Educator who considers himself a moderate pragmatic progressive liberal, meaning that he thinks practically liberal, acts practically liberal, and he is not going to change in the near future. But, if he does he will be sure to let you know.
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jess
6 years ago

We need to get rid of some of the gutless wonders in office right now that are so scared of this guy they will not pull his choke collar, that is what we need.

Reply to  jess
6 years ago

I agree. There are so very few that have the courage to yank that chain.

Bill Formby
Reply to  jess
6 years ago

Oh, I agree with you Jess. But the Republicans in congress, for the most part, are simply afraid that he will add them to his hit parade. What I would like to happen is for congress to simply look at his behavior in office and hold hearings on his competency to continue to stay in office. One thing the Republicans always count on is that Democrats rarely consider trash like Trump or Roy Moore for office. If the Demos were to take both house of congress back in November they would not go off the rails to the left. The moderates and progressives are two rational to suddenly throw the entire country into chaos just because they can.

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