You are here

Prof. Victor Menaldo in The Conversation, "How constitutional guardrails have always contained presidential ambitions"

Submitted by Stephen Dunne on January 16, 2025 - 1:31pm
Congress
Congress

Prof. Victor Menaldo writes in The Conversation that the return of Donald Trump as President of the United States is not as dangerous as many state, as the office of the president has many constraints on it.

As Donald Trump’s second inauguration fast approaches, concerns he threatens American democracy are rising yet again. Some warnings have cited Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric, willingness to undermine or malign institutions meant to constrain any president...

Authoritarianism erodes property rights and the rule of law, so financial markets typically respond with alarm to political unrest. If major investors and corporations really believed the United States was on the brink of dictatorship, there would be large-scale capital flight, equity sell-offs, spikes in U.S. credit default swaps or rising bond yields unexplained by typical macroeconomic factors such as inflation forecasts.

Instead, there have been no systematic signs of such market reactions, nor an investor exodus from American markets. Quite the contrary....

American democracy has vulnerabilities, and other democracies have collapsed under powerful executives before. But in my view, it’s not reasonable to draw definitive lessons from a tiny number of extreme outliers, such as Hitler in 1933 or the handful of elected leaders who staged more recent auto-coups in fragile or developing democracies such as Argentina, Peru, Turkey and even Hungary.

The United States stands out for having a complex federal system, entrenched legal practices and multiple layers of institutional friction. Those protections have historically proven adept at limiting presidential overreach – whether subtle or bombastic.

In addition, state-level politicians, including attorneys general and governors, have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to challenge federal overreach through litigation and noncooperation.

Please link here for the full article.

Share