Nixon Victorious
By 
I suspect everyone here understands — at least at some level — that we’re seeing the apotheosis of a fifty-year movement to legalize and constitutionalize the Nixon administration. But Paul Musgrave has brought the receipts, and you should read his latest newsletter.
The presidency as Donald Trump wields it is far more unconstrained than that Nixon occupied. Indeed, given contemporary Supreme Court rulings regarding presidential immunity and bribery, many infamous abuses of the Nixon administration might not even qualify. (Hell, it’s possible that even Spiro Agnew’s graft—which included literally accepting cash in his office—wouldn’t qualify these days.) Many of the laws that sought to rein in the presidency have been eroded or vitiated—some gradually, some suddenly. And norms? There should be a plaque outside the West Wing: This place is not a place of honor.
Some of this erosion has taken decades to unfold. Some of it has unfolded quickly, within extremely recent memory. (Trump vs United States was 13 months ago!) All of it matters.
The presidency is now vastly closer to being an elected dictatorship than at any peacetime point in U.S. history. When I was young and read more (actual) reactionary thought, I recall that conservatives of the Human Eventsilk were agog at the use of declarations of emergency to put through programs expanding presidential power. Trump uses emergency declarations like a punchline—an abuse of power that is gross in more ways than one.
Checks and balances? Obviously, the other co-ordinate branches of the federal government, and even most state governments, are not balancing in any meaningful degree. (Some political scientists are rushing to point at this or that third-order balancing, which is the literal definition of the forest/trees confusion.) The real checks, which were undertaken by institutions like the media, unions, and universities, have been eviscerated. (Nixon would have dreamed of using antitrust powers to break the CBS News division. What was once political science fiction is now political science fact.)
Read the whole thing, etc.
