A limp caudillo. That was a phrase I once applied to Donald Trump’s pretense to be a strongman, in a first term that was actually characterized by the imperial presidency’s retreat. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were far more successful at consolidating presidential power, and Trump 1.0 mostly demonstrated that an inexperienced, incompetent president could still be pinned down like Gulliver.
But there is nothing limp or constrained about Trump 2.0: It’s an imperial presidency, full stop. We can debate how it compares to prior peaks of presidential Caesarism — Franklin Roosevelt still sets the standard — but the second term of Trumpism has exceeded its recent predecessors in powers claimed and exercised with minimal or ineffective opposition. The only question now is whether the change is permanent, whether Trump’s successors (of either party) will consolidate these powers, or whether this version of the imperial presidency requires a Man of Destiny and will dissolve in the hands of a mere politician.
Categorizing the powers is helpful. First are those that Trump has claimed within the executive branch — powers over the administrative state, over agencies and appointees and grant-making. These have the clearest constitutional warrant, they’ve been partially ratified by the Supreme Court, their exercise has inspired spasms of protest but little dramatic political backlash, and a future Democratic president will be eager to use them to undo things that Trump has done. These are all reasons to expect that some version of the Trump-era “unitary executive” is here to stay.
Second are the powers that Trump has claimed in areas where Congress has already abdicated or handed over some of its responsibilities, but where no prior president tried to turn the ratchet quite so hard.
This week’s military attack on a boat allegedly carrying Venezuelan drug smugglers is a good example. The presidency has long assumed substantial powers to wage small wars and target terrorists without direct congressional authorization. But waging an undeclared war on narco-criminals is a further power grab, conspicuously lacking in legal justifications.
Likewise with Trump’s tariffs: Congress has ceded some form of the tariff power to the White House, and past presidents have happily put that prerogative to use. But the Trumpian trade war is more extraordinary, its legal justifications more strained and its implications for the economy obviously more dramatic.
Will these ratchets last? In the first case, it seems very doubtful that Congress will ever seriously constrain presidential war powers. The shift from “only Congress declares war” to “the president can attack just about whomever he likes outside the country’s borders” might seem less naked under a less-bloody-minded chief executive, but I wouldn’t expect Trump’s precedent-setting drug war to yield a reversal or rebuke.
With tariffs, given their unpopularity, you might well expect a future Congress to impose stricter limits on presidential trade wars. Except that this would most likely require the cooperation of a future president, for whom the promise of a unilaterally available revenue stream may seem permanently attractive. Which suggests that the future of this power grab will depend primarily on whether the Supreme Court decides to reject or circumscribe it.
Finally, you have the powers that Trump has employed in a provisional and dubiously legal manner, on the theory that by the time his moves are reversed or his legal arguments rejected, the process will have already done its political work.
This category encompasses everything from his attacks on law firms and universities and his tacit shakedown of certain corporate leaders, to various visa revocations and deportations that have not held up well in court, to potentially his use of federal troops in cities like Los Angeles. In these cases Trump is proving that the executive can just do a lot of things before constitutional restraints catch up with him. And the reaction, from the willingness of some institutions to go along and settle to the clear shifts in immigrant behavior, shows that there is a real form of power here.
As such, it will be very tempting for future presidents to imitate him. But it’s also the place where Trump’s personal qualities are most decisive: his personal shamelessness and contempt for institutional norms, his ability to neuter intraparty rivals, push yes-men through the confirmation process and bend the principles of people in his orbit. I’m not sure a different Republican, however populist or combative, would have the same success, and likewise a normal Democrat. Some of Trump’s power is simply his own.
But that doesn’t mean he won’t leave a profoundly imperial legacy. For that legacy to somehow disappear, he would need to be not just restrained but comprehensively defeated, through some combination of wild overreach (a confrontation with the Supreme Court?) and policy disaster (a deep recession?).
Otherwise, even if he leaves office unpopular and even if the next president is a Democrat, this model of executive power will likely outlive the Caesar who created it.
Source photographs via Getty Images.
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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is also the host of the Opinion podcast “Interesting Times.” He is the author, most recently, of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
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