Sunday, December 31, 2017

For Trump, a Year of Reinventing the Presidency

The New York Times reports:
What worries insiders has electrified many on the outside. Mr. Trump has cast aside the mythology of a magisterial presidency removed from the people in favor of a reality-show accessibility that strikes a chord in parts of the country alienated by the establishment. That indifference to the way things have always been done has energized Mr. Trump’s core supporters, who cheer his efforts to destroy political correctness, take on smug elites and smash a self-interested system that, in their view, has shafted everyday Americans.

“The norms and conventions are exactly what he ran against and, in his view, are why we’re in the fix we’re in,” Mr. Kelly said in an interview. “He doesn’t intentionally make decisions that are opposite, say, of what a previous president would make. He’s got a view of what’s better for America.”

In upending the traditional dynamics of governance, Mr. Trump has made himself the most dominant figure in American life even as polls show that he is also the most unpopular first-year president in modern history. He is testing the proposition that a president can still effectively remake the country without securing or even seeking a broader mandate.

“You’ve got someone who is defining the presidency very differently,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian. “Trump is essentially saying, ‘I’m not going to operate just within the boundaries that the founders might have expected or people might have expected for 200 years. I’m going to operate within the boundaries of what is strictly legal, and I’m going to push those boundaries if I can.’”
An article worth your time.