David Harsanyi explains in a Federalist column how a Donald Trump presidency might follow American precedents.
… [A]gonizing about Trump’s political ascent is understandable if you happen to be worried about extraconstitutional actions, nativism, protectionism, and economic crackpottery. And The New Yorker cover is a helpful way to point out that extraconstitutional actions, nativism, protectionism, and economic crackpottery is not the domain of any particular party. Then. Or now.
The patron saint of the bureaucratic state, FDR, may have more in common with Hillary Clinton than Ted Cruz, but I’m unsure why [New Yorker cover artist Barry] Blitt believes he would be distraught by the way Trump intends to wield presidential power. Few presidents, in fact, have ever taken advantage of crisis and fear more effectively than FDR. Roosevelt brandished executive power in ways that would almost certainly make a President Trump look like a piker. I’m not sure even this casino magnate would try to pack the Supreme Court with judges to neutralize anyone hostile to his agenda. That takes a special kind of disdain for process.
Though all right-thinking people were appalled by Trump’s promise to temporarily halt Muslim immigration, would the noble and dignified Roosevelt — a man who forced thousands of American citizens into detention camps for nothing more than their race — be similarly aghast? There’s no evidence to believe he would. …
… No one, I hope, is under the impression that Teddy Roosevelt — who at one point embraced some of the ugliest pseudoscientific aspects of progressive racism and chauvinism of the early 20th century — would be especially concerned about the intimidation and bluster of Trumpism? He lived for that sort of thing.
And should John F. Kennedy, who was not merely a moral disaster but a middling president who owed his entire political career to the fortune of his family, be distressed that Trump might class up the White House?
