The Trump Presidency and Rhetoric

This piece was written and graded as part of my time in college earning a BA in Political Science. To a student looking for research, or just a curious person; if any part of my paper interest you I suggest you follow your research through to my cited sources. The sources are much more knowledgeable than I. This essay was turned in under the title 'Hyper-Presidentialist rhetoric and the fragility of the American Status Quo' by me in November of 2019.

Abstract

This paper aims to outline the progression of imperial powers to the President of the United States. Then defines the phenomenon of Hyper-Presidentialism in other countries. An analysis of the rhetoric of Donald Trump then allows us to conclude that some element of hyper-presidetialism is occurring in the United States. This is supported by analysis of the Trump administrations willingness to comply with congress.

Introduction

Society as a whole is only 6,000 years old, while some scholars think human beings have existed for almost 300,000 years. Democracy was first conceptualized by the Athenians in 508 BCE, more than 2,500 years ago. With a spotty application thought out that time period. Democracy is a commodity that many of us have to live without in this time period. With the United States, one of the worlds oldest liberal democracies is a baby amongst nations. Only 243 years old, with peaceful transitions of power most of the time. The United States has a number of other prestige factors, it is the largest economy in the world, it is a leading member of the U.N. and NATO, along with being the premier world super power. Given our lucky place in history, it is easy to see this American place in the world as natural, and something to be taken for granted. That is not the case, the American status quo is very fragile. The American presidential system has been growing in influence since the nations founding, and inherent points in the presidential system have caused the instability, and de-liberalization of other nations. Now this system prone to allowing for executive expansion is in the hands of Donald Trump, who openly seeks more presidential power for himself, ignores the will of Congress, and insinuates a desire to remain in office indefinitely.

Context of the American Presidency

The presidential system is an American innovation. After the failed Articles of Confederation the United States was joined under its current constitution. The American democratic government which has run in some form since has had a strong record of peaceful transitions of power, with only the presidency of Abraham Lincoln contested in a martial way. The nations first President George Washington stepped away from power at the end of his second term, creating a tradition of executives voluntarily releasing power at the end of their elected term. With all President’s respecting this tradition; except Franklin D. Roosevelt who was elected to four terms, before a constitutional amendment was placed limiting any holder of the presidency to two terms, or ten years in office.

The relative consistency with which the country has changed leaders indicates a strong and stable democracy, however the power wielded by the American President has varied widely between Washington and Trump. It was not normal for the president to address congress directly until 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson did it for the first time. ("State Of The Union Address | US House Of Representatives: History, Art & Archives”) Wilson a political scientist by training knew the influence the Commander-in-Chiefs words had, and used the gravitas of his congressional addresses to strengthen his own position. Using the increased visibility that being president gives an individual is a common tactic for expanding presidential power, such as Wilson’s predecessor President William McKinley who utilized his office to sell Americans on the Spanish American War, likening US forces to liberators and making appeals to manifest destiny. (Brewer) A contemporary of the former two presidents mentioned, President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the office as, the bully pulpit, literally meaning big pulpit, Roosevelt was referring to the sweeping powers of persuasion now in the hands of the U.S. President.

As the human understanding of technology grew, so to did the size of presidential influence. President John F. Kennedy embraced the news early on; he had documentary crews embedded with him, during the last few days of his campaign against Hubert Humphrey. This was essentially reality television for the time. Then there was the famous Kennedy, Nixon debate, and Kennedy’s mastery of the TV medium got John F. Kennedy into the White House.

Kennedy and his aids quickly recognized that the TV was a winning strategy. So to keep Kennedy at max popular opinion, at full power, he had to be put on screen often, so presidential press conferences became televised under Kennedy. He would enter the frame 30 seconds after they started rolling, to build suspense, giving reporters time to announce him. An increasingly grandiose way to handle America’s top civil servant. The new status quo created by this was recognized by the other side as well. Republican senators were trying to do their own regular televised events, attempting to compete with the Kennedy narrative. To preserve the Camelot image, the White House provided only suitable images of the President and his family. Anything unflattering would not be released for any reason. The deference given to Kennedy by the media while in office would become a cornerstone of American Presidential politics. (GreenBerg)

The American Presidency has always changed to fit the time it existed in, yet over time the presidency has seen a consolidation of military powers. After the Vietnam Era some action was taken by the legislative branch to limit executive power. Analysis of presidential policy making in the post Vietnam era by Kenneth E. Sharpe, a professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College found that in Latin America, the American President was often acting with broad executive authority with little congressional oversight in foreign policy decisions. (Sharpe)

Andrew Rudalevige professor of Political Science at Bowdoin College characterizes the current state of the American Imperial Presidency well here.

“Despite the consistent, and often successful, efforts of presidents to expand their institutional resources past the sparse grants of Article II, however, they ultimately remain subject to its constraints and part of a set of potential checks and counterbalances. The modern presidency has many potent tools, and a global reach, surely unforeseen by the architects of the Constitution. Yet the framework they designed remains. Presidential power, in a real sense, is the residual left over after subtracting out the power of other actors in the system” (Rudalevige)

Rudalevige means to highlight how the presidency often takes advantages of gaps in government left in place by the other branches, and seems to present a more proactive Congress as the best counterbalance to an imperial presidency. The article by Rudalevige discusses the ebb of presidential power after Vietnam, and the expansion of the offices powers since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Rudalevige also demonstrates the clear intention of the Executive Branch to expand its powers post 9/11 quoting President George W. Bush in 2002 saying “I have an obligation to make sure that the presidency remains robust. I'm not going to let Congress erode the power of the executive branch…” and Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 stated “For the 35 years that I've been in this town, there's been a constant, steady erosion of the prerogatives and the powers of the president of the United States, and I don't want to be a part of that” (Rudalevige). Tellingly the ACLU’s top ten abuses of power after 9/11, a list that includes, warrantless wiretapping, torture, kidnapping, and detention, a growing surveillance society, abuse of the patriot act, Real ID, increased government secrecy, no fly lists, political spying, abuse of material witness statute, and attacks on academic freedom. (ACLU) All actions undertaken or enforced by the Executive Branch, and started by the Bush Administration.

The authority and influence of the United States President has steadily increased over time and continues to innovate its way to more power throughout the 21st century. President Barrack Obama was the first to have a twitter account, but now twitter has become a major part of President Donald Trumps brand, as he uses it to interact directly with the American people, and to mobilize his base, or distract the public when political expedient for the president.

Hyper-Presidentialism

Despite the expanding powers of the president, the American system of government has been seen as something of a success story. This lead to widespread adopting of the presidential system amongst other former European colonial holdings in the United States sphere of influence. Specifically in Latin America the office of president found wide adoption. Latin American governments traditionally have directly elected executives (Constitution of Argentina, article 94; Constitution of Chile, article 26; Constitution of Colombia, article 190; Constitution of Mexico, article 81; Constitution of Peru, article 111; Constitution of Venezuela, article 230) with a fixed term of office. (Constitution of Argentina, article 90; Constitution of Brazil, article 82; Constitution of Chile, article 25; Constitution of Colombia, article 190; Constitution of Mexico, article 81; Constitution of Peru, article 111; Constitution of Venezuela, article 228)

Latin America’s acceptance of the American system it has not yielded the same result.Tensions between the legislative branch and the independently elected executive often causes a phenomenon known as Hyper-Presidentialism. This is different from the imperial nature of the United States presidency as the expansion of presidential power has not stepped out of the lose bounds instituted by the nations founders. Hyper-Presidentialism is to use executive power beyond the scope given to the president in a nations constitution. (Rose-Ackerman, et. al) This abuse of power undermines the nations stability and democratic institutions.

Hyper-Presidentialism is often used to override an obstinate legislative branch, and is often supported by making appeals to an independently elected executives mandate, as a justification for rule by decree. “The essence of Presidentialism is the separation of powers, but the overlapping notion of checks and balances is equally important. However, in a hyper-presidential system, Presidents who are challenged use the rhetoric of separation of powers to defend their actions and argue against the imposition of checks and balances by the other branches and institutions.” (Rose-Ackerman, et. al) Willerton and Carrera when presenting to the Western Political Science Association in 2007 discuss the phenomenon of rule by decree from the executives of two countries they consider to be emerging democracies. Russia and Argentina, where they found that executive decrees are a reliable unilateral way for the President to shape events in their country. (Willerton and Carrera)

Hyper-Presidentialism is about expanding the authority of an executive officer by essentially grabbing power and seeing if the system will punish them for it. “In testing the limits of their power, Presidents may subvert constitutional, and legal structures designed to check and balance them.” (Rose-Ackerman, et. al)

Hyper-Presidentialist Rhetoric

With the demonstrated expansion of power in the United States presidency over time, it is somewhat reasonable to assume that their are hyper-presidential tendencies in the United States. While most the policy innovations that lead to the imperial presidency were made within the confines of United States constitutional law, their exist numerous examples of presidents testing the limits of their power, especially as they communicate with their power base, the American people.

The quotes mentioned earlier in this paper from President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney do not meet the standard for hyper-presidentialist rhetoric. As both quotes allude to restoring powers that the president has a historical precedent for having, and allude to not allowing the current powers of the office to be diminished. A statement that aims to increase the existing power of the president in argument would be hyper-presidentialist. Though the quotes discussed do not meet the standard, the Bush administrations positions on a unitary executive (Rudalevige) as hyper-presidential in nature.

To further our argument, a non contemporary example of what hyper-presidential rhetoric would look like in the United States. “Well when the President does it… that means it is not illegal.” (Richard Nixon, 1977) This qualifies because the argument of the statement is clear, it intends to bolster to power of the president by asserting a hitherto unnamed power of the president to ignore U.S. law. It can also be assumed that Nixon’s intentions when saying that were to expand the power of the office he held, making him the beneficiary of this power grab.It is worth noting that the American people were not sold on this line of thinking, but the attempt by Nixon to expand presidential power is clear.

The question remains, can this test for hyper-presidential rhetoric be fairly applied to our current president, Donald Trump. In his article, The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery, Paul Elliott Johnson asserts that much of Trumps 2016 campaign rhetoric meets the framework for demagoguery, and chauvinism. (Johnson) A study by Carlos de la Torre analyzed the speech patterns of Latin American left wing populist leaders, and found Trumps language to be similar to the tactics of these South American populists. (de la Torre) With the existing scholarly criticism in mind, it doesn’t seem far fetched to suggest that something may be afoul with the way Donald Trump talks. This paper however will maintain its focus of Trump’s hyper-presidential tendencies.

“He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great…I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.” (Donald Trump, 2018, PBS) Trump in this quote is extolling President Xi Jinping of China on his ascension to lifelong power in China, and suggesting that one day the United States may also have a president for life. This is clearly an attempt to argue for extension of his own term of office, as currently he is limited to two terms.

“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny…I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher…I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad…But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress ... with all this invest[igations] — that’s all they want to do is — you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.” (Donald Trump, 2019, Wise) A lot happens in this quote. First Trump undermines the congressional action against him by calling it cute, and nonsense. Trump is also trying to expand his martial power, not by alluding to the fact that he is commander-in-chief, but by suggesting that armed groups have personal loyalty to him. Lastly he is suggesting that this martial loyalty he personally commands might be used as a counterweight to the machinations of a liberal congress. This is an extremely obvious attempt to threaten violence in order to override the political functions of the American Government.

In research funded by the Political Science Department and Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation Gubler and Kalmoe researched the effects of rhetoric toward specific groups on individuals in Israel and India. Survey sets taken analyze the effect of violent rhetoric on the survey participants view of the out group. It then asked survey participants if they would support policies that harm the out group. The paper concludes that violent rhetoric does increase aggressive outlooks, however this was studied in existing ethnic conflicts. The translation to other scenarios does not guarantee a similar result. The language used was also very mild, words like ‘fight’ were used, but more inflammatory language did not get studied. It does seem to follow other scholarship though, as other findings on political language have found that it can affect peoples outlook toward an out group. (Gubler et al) The rhetoric studied in India and Israel being anti Muslim, anti Palestinian, or anti Pakistani does provide advantages for comparison to the west, as Donald Trump himself frequently targets Muslims as an out group. The out group mentioned in the later Trump quotation is Liberals or Democrats. Alluding to violence on a political opponent, and it is reasonable to conclude based on the Gubler study that this could help create an openness to violence against liberals amongst Donald Trumps base.

This amongst a time where Right Wing extremism is on the rise in the United States, according to a report from 2009 from the Department of Homeland Security. (US Department of Homeland Security) Daniel Byman a Professor and Vice Dean at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy wrote an article called “The Threat from Within” and discusses how right wing extremism is increasingly prevalent in the governments of the United States and Europe. (Byman) These studies make the words used by the president seem especially dangerous as not only does the quote seek to make the president seem above the moves of congress, but it also threatens to cause violence to erupt in the political realm.

When Trump’s Actions Coincide with His Words

America prides itself on freedom of speech. So to many, the criticism of an American Presidents words does not bolster some Americans to alarm. Sticks and stones as the old adage goes, if words cannot hurt us, (which the Gubler study should cause doubt on that bit of popular wisdom), what is Trump doing that would attempt to hurt us. Well, to go along with Donald Trump’s words are a few policy actions that could be seen as executive overreach or power grabs.

Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash writing for the William and Mary Law review argued a slightly different point on the imperial presidency, stating that though the war powers of the president seem to have grown, the independence of some elements of the federal bureaucracy has actually diminished some of the presidents power. (Bangalore Prakash) However, this pattern does not seem to hold for Trump. Who values personal loyalty to him above other matters in his selection of the nations technocrats. Trump has also limited the ability of congress to conduct oversight of the bureaucracy as Trump keeps his people out of congressional reach. Repeatedly ignoring subpoenas for documents and testimony. With several challenges ongoing in court. (Callahan, and Fischer-Baum)

Trump’s disrespect for the power of congress continues as the White House has completely opted out of participating in the impeachment inquiry, with no lawyer being sent to represent the president. (Rascoe) As the House impeachment hearings went on, sources close to the president were forbidden from testify, with vast amounts of information being protected under executive privilege. (Voreacos et al.)

These actions show a continued intent by president Trump to flout democratic norms, bend rules to his liking, and exert as much power as possible in American society unchecked.

Solutions

“…we need to acknowledge that zealots from across the political spectrum have contributed to the decline of public deliberation in America. And whatever “rules” we decide on need to reflect rhetorical principles, not merely political preferences. As David Zarefsky has argued, there have always been “two faces” or democratic rhetoric, “one benign, one threatening” and if we hope to restore the balance between the two we need to encourage all of our citizens to “test , compare, and join” in arguments about public affairs not close off debate or discourage public discussion.” (Hogan and Tell)

This quote represents the best solution to the existing problem. Unfortunately it is the hard and impractical solution where everyone must resolve to get along. The idea being that though cable news is rife with disagreement, and our president seemingly wants to be a strong man America brought itself here. Citizens need to hold themselves accountable to the rules of debate, and expect the same from their leaders. People must learn to turn away from demagoguery even if it advances their own policy goals. The road to where we are was paved with unchecked political intention. More honest and reasoned debate, a consensus on truth, might be the only way to protect and defend deliberative democracy.

Conclusion

Donald Trump is President of the United States. He has on multiple occasions pondered aloud his desire to stay in the office of president, longer than the maximum amount of time prescribed by the constitution. He has insinuated a political attack on his presidency could be met with sectarian violence. This is not normal for the American Presidency, but it does have international precedent, and those precedents, like hyper-presidentailism don’t bode well for the future of American democracy. 

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