Checks and Balances?

A response to my first article on the major flaw in our constitution stated that I was wrong because — checks and balances. That, in fact, congress could remove a non-compliant President.

So, let’s take a look shall we?

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to ignore the obvious facts of Trump’s criminal history in office he is under investigation for, and concentrate on what I was truly talking about — his repeated and continuous violation of the two emolument clauses. The first of these is the most obvious, the one that says a President cannot receive emoluments — or payments — from foreign entities or governments. The second isn’t usually seen as an “emolument” clause, but it is — it says clearly that a President can only receive his salary from the Federal government.

And yet, from the moment Trump was sworn into office, he was already violating the first — by foreign entities staying in his hotel in DC for the inauguration! He hadn’t even been sworn in before these payments started.

As for the second, every time he stayed in one of his own properties, he was accompanied by the Secret Service — and his own staff, who had to pay for their accommodations. According to the media, many of these properties did not charge a government rate, but commercial rates, in fact.

Obviously, this is a violation of the second clause. and he did this during his entire term in office.

Now then, what, exactly did the government do about these two clear violations of the most basic law of the land?

Nothing. Neither the FBI nor the DOJ did anything at all, and never, in fact, even opened an investigation! On the other hand, two Congress persons filed suit — as INDIVIDUALS — against Trump over this. With his usual flair of ignoring the law, he merely dragged it out in court until his term was over at which point the case became moot.

And that entire sordid story illustrates perfectly my case, which is that there is no enforcement MECHANISM within the Constitution to enforce itself. Checks and balances are not enforcement — they are inherently political activities subject to the will of the different Branches and the Party which controls each one. You’ll notice that the Democrats tried — twice — to impeach Trump, and each time the Republican controlled Senate refused to convict, in spite of a plethora of evidence of his guilt.

In fact, it is obvious that the idea of any kind of future enforcement of the law had no affect on Trump or his desire to do whatever he wanted. Nor, for that matter, on any of his closest supporters, who were smart and experienced enough to know full well what was possible.

In short, Donald J. Trump is the PERFECT example of the very thing the Founders were afraid of — a President with the desire and the balls to attempt a takeover of the US Government by the force of his will and the cooperation of others. This again, illustrates the flaw, which is that in their day, they thought that social pressure from fellow members of their high class and economic standing would have the unofficial power to force others of their class to comply with the spirit of the law.

They never imagined that in the future, others not of their gender and class would become involved, and that social pressure would have no affect. The generations of Americans between them and us were taught what we were — that this system of “comity” would protect us, and those vaunted “checks and balances” would be sufficient if it didn’t.

So, if there is one thing we do owe DJ Trump a big thank you for, it’s showing us clearly that we badly need to refine the most basic structure of our government’s organization. And frankly, that includes re-jiggering the relationship between the States and the Feds, something that has been clearly shown to be holding us back on the electoral front, at the very least.

But that’s a conversation for another day. Thanks for reading!