Opinion by Charles Lipson
With Democrats in disarray and unable to choose a positive theme, they have settled on the obvious alternative. Unite around their shared hatreds. Near the top of that list is Elon Musk and his Doge project. “Nobody elected Musk.” “He is more powerful than the president.” Time magazine tried to drive home that point by depicting him behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
These attacks are manifestly untrue, but they follow a shrewd piece of political advice, given by the old Leftist organiser, Saul Alinsky. Personalise your political grievances. Let one person stand for much bigger complaints. It’s easier to mobilise around that concrete target and move on to bigger goals by taking him down.
Republicans recognise the risk here. They have responded by pointing out that Musk answers directly to president Trump. There are no middlemen, no bureaucratic protections. Trump can fire Musk as soon as he becomes a political liability. That, of course, is what Democrats hope to make him.
This predictable back-and-forth is part of a broader attack on Trump’s swift, aggressive actions against entrenched Washington power centres. Rolling them back and asserting control is the heart of Trump’s MAGA agenda.
Both sides recognise that basic point, but they have overlooked another, equally important one that illuminates the long arc of America’s changing governance. Democrats created all the tools Trump is using to attack official Washington. Oops. They hoped to centralise power in the presidency and break through the old limitations of the 1787 Constitution. They largely succeeded after decades of effort.
What the authors of this transformation never expected was a president who would use the great powers they handed him to dismantle their own cherished projects. Yet that is exactly what Trump is doing.
This political ju-jitsu puts Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and their friends in a very awkward position. They grab the bullhorn to scream “no one elected Musk”. They’re right, of course. But then no one elected the bureaucrats they are defending, and they are far more insulated from control by elected officials.
Will the Democrats’ counter-assault succeed? We won’t know until they take their case to the voters and the courts. The courts will decide which Trump actions are permissible, which need congressional authorisation, and which violate the Constitution. But we already know that the Democrats’ resistance is politically unpopular and filled with self-contradiction.
The irony is unmistakable. Trump is using the powers of a strong White House to attack the administrative architecture built so laboriously by Democrats. Their progressive agenda is captured by the phrase “Living Constitution,” and was first articulated by Prof Woodrow Wilson (before he became president) and Herbert Croly. It began, in practice, in 1937, when the Supreme Court buckled to Franklin Roosevelt’s pressure and ruled that his new agencies and their regulatory actions were constitutional. Until then, the Court had ruled the other way.
After that, the largest steps were taken by Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society programme created Washington’s complex array of bureaucracies. Barack Obama put the capstone in place with his healthcare legislation, a Democratic goal since Harry Truman.
These cumulative efforts shifted power away from the states and, within Washington, from Congress to the president and a proliferating array of Executive Branch agencies. The president could then govern by executive orders and regulatory actions by those agencies. Although Congress still passed laws, its principal role was reduced to overseeing those agencies (poorly) and approving engorged, consolidated budgets.
Only recently has this trajectory begun to change. That change is the core of the fight in Washington now. A more conservative Supreme Court has begun setting more stringent limits on bureaucratic discretion, both by eliminating deference to agency decisions and by requiring Congressional authorisation for major rules. Trump is acting along parallel lines. Together, these actions by the Supreme Court and a populist president are attempting to alter the long arc of a government that is increasingly centralised, intrusive, and bureaucratic.
The irony is that Trump and his team can take these giant steps, often unilaterally, only because they have grasped the tools created by Democrats and progressive advocates. Trump is using those tools in ways their architects never anticipated. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” as Monty Python said. Now, the Grand Inquisitor has arrived, wielding the very weapons Democrats gave him.
Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His latest book is ‘Free Speech 101: A Practical Guide for Students’. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com