How to Wield Power

Power is a muscle. It must be exercised or else it atrophies.

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about power — who has it and how to wield it effectively. Needless to say, the president of the United States has a tremendous amount of power by dint of his office but not every president knows how to use it. Joe Biden did not. Donald Trump does.

Trump’s power derives not just from the fact that his office makes him the most powerful man on earth. He is powerful because he has bullied the Republicans (and, increasingly, some Democrats) in Congress into doing his bidding, effectively demolishing the constitutional separation of powers. He is powerful because he knows how to use the bully pulpit and he doesn’t care whom he offends. Congress passed a law to force the sale or shut down of TikTok and the Supreme Court upheld it? Never mind — that’s not a law Trump intends to follow. The 14th Amendment clearly states that anyone born on United States soil is an American citizen? That’s not anything Trump intends to follow either.

Does it really matter if the Supreme Court ultimately upholds birthright citizenship, as the Constitution clearly dictates it must? It would to a president who cares about the spine of this country, which Trump does not. He cares about showing his supporters that he is fighting for them and their priorities and he will bulldoze anyone who stands in his way. In turn, his supporters give him unlimited support to abuse his power. Just look at his pardon of the violent criminals who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in 2021. Will any member of Congress or any Supreme Court justice want that mob unleashed on themselves now, especially if it can be unleashed with impunity?

Is Trump overstepping the power of the presidency? There’s no such thing, according to the Supreme Court. There is literally nothing Trump can do as president that will be deemed illegal, which makes him the only human being in the nation who can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants — and no one can do anything about it.

Was John Roberts laughing or crying on the inside when he asked Trump to swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” at his inauguration last week? Roberts and his fellow right-wing justices gave Trump absolute immunity to break that oath each and every day.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats have forgotten that they are not without power, though they are in the minority. Trump will be sending up around one thousand nominees to the Hill for confirmation — most, if not all of them, MAGA stalwarts. The only way to get these people confirmed and in place to wreak havoc on our institutions is either through the cumbersome and time consuming committee process before their nominations reach the Senate floor or, more practically, through the unanimous consent of the Senate. During Trump’s first year in office in 2017, a whopping 74% of his nominees were approved by unanimous consent.

Senate rules allow any senator to put a hold on any Trump nominee. Democrats should put a hold on every single one whom Majority Leader John Thune wants to ram through via unanimous consent. Every single one, no matter how meritorious. Force the senate to take up valuable floor time debating Trump’s nominees. It is less time that Republicans will spend on the business of destroying the nation.

And yet, no Democrat has even hinted that he or she intends to use this tool to throw sand in the gears of the MAGA agenda. Gumming up the works is so… unprecedented. It’s just not done.

What are they worried about, that Republicans are going to go negative on them by railing against the Democratic exploitation of arcane senate rules? Let me assure them that no one outside the Beltway will understand or care about this. Americans are interested in deliverables, not process stories. Democrats should do nothing to help Republicans deliver.

Remember when Kamala Harris packed arena after arena with fired-up supporters? Our Democratic leaders don’t. So far, they failed to harness any of that energy to push back against Trump, even though he won by a smaller popular vote margin than Biden had in 2020. They have categorically failed to use the power of their own bully pulpits to stand up for their values.

On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order “reversing an initiative signed by former President Joe Biden directing Medicare and Medicaid agencies to test models that could both lower prescription drug prices and make cell and gene therapy treatments more accessible to Medicaid recipients.” He also threw out a program to cap generic drug prices for Medicare recipients to $2.

Here is what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had to say about this:

Huh? Unless you’ve been scouring Trump’s executive orders, do you have any idea what Senator Schumer is talking about? More relevantly, is this how Chuck from Brooklyn should be communicating? Hell no. Here is what he should have said, “If you’re 65 or older, Trump just jacked up your prescriptions by hundreds of dollars a year.” That’s it. That’s the whole message.

On the other side of the Capital, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t bother to say anything on social media about this at all. Where’s that fighting Brooklyn spirit, congressman? If you saw someone punch an elderly lady in the face on the streets of Bed-Stuy, would you do nothing? Because that’s what Trump’s executive order does: it punches old ladies in the face who now have to choose between paying their rent and taking life-saving medication.

Even if Democrats don’t have the power of the majority, they do have the option of exercising soft power — the kind that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde wielded when she stood at the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, looked Trump in the eye and demanded compassion for her fellow human beings. MAGA’s reaction to her sermon was predictably noxious but what struck me most was that a lone woman of God was able to expose the inefficacy of Democratic leaders. While they continue to flail in search of a strategy, Budde spoke from the heart about the fears that plague so many of her fellow Americans.

It’s not just Budde who is exposing how little fight Democratic leaders have. When Elon Musk leaned heavily into his fascist tendencies by issuing the Roman salute, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looked straight into the camera and said, “In this country, we hate Nazis.” How hard is it to issue a statement of values that represents most Americans? You’re not going to lose vulnerable senators and Members in Georgia or New Hampshire because you stood up to Nazis but you might actually get people interested enough to pay attention to what you’re saying.

Oh, and the price of eggs skyrocketed by over 6% during Trump’s first week in office. Can’t we at least pound the drum on this? Is anyone interested in shoving the price of groceries back in Trump’s face now that he’s president or are we really going to sit back and wait to “give him a chance” to bring the cost of eggs down?

Gentlemen, your troops won’t follow you into battle if you look like you’re afraid to do battle yourself. Rallying the troops is Warfare 101, both militarily and politically. There’s a reason that the Saint Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V has stood the test of time for centuries: it stirs people to patriotism, to defend their ideals, to fight. Where is the Democrats’ Saint Crispin’s Day speech? Why do the rest of us feel like we are entirely on our own, that our leaders are cowering in their offices, confused about how to prosecute the case against authoritarians and wanna-be fascists? Who is leading us into political battle against Trump and MAGA?

You have to admire Trump’s ability to exercise the powers that the bully pulpit and the levers the presidency have given him. Voters who do not pay much attention to politics will think that he is doing something with this all this insane flurry of activity. They will follow him because they think he is leading. Democrats, on the other hand, are doing nothing to push back — not legislatively and not politically. They are letting Trump define the narrative and once he defines it, it will be easier for him to ram through his agenda, because he will have the people on his side.

It is past time for our Democratic leaders to wake up. Power is a muscle. It must be exercised or else it atrophies.