That's a picture, above, of William A. Galston. Clicking the link just provided will let you know that Galston "holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and that he was formerly the Saul Stern Professor and Dean at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a professor of political science at the University of Texas, Austin. Galston specializes in issues of U.S. public philosophy and political institutions, having joined the Brookings Institution on January 1, 2006."
Galston is, in other words, a highly distinguished scholar with expert knowledge about how the United States government is supposed to operate.
Galston also writes columns for The Wall Street Journal. Let me provide you with a link to a Galston column in The Journal, published on July 31, 2024. The column is titled, "J.D. Vance’s Disregard for the Rule of Law." I think what Galston has to say is significant (emphasis added):
J.D. Vance is unfit to be vice president of the United States for many reasons, chiefly because he has shown a disregard for the constitutional balance of powers and the rule of law.In a 2021 interview with podcast host Jack Murphy, Mr. Vance said that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he should sack federal agency workers en masse. Mr. Vance said that if he could give Mr. Trump one piece of advice, it would be this: “Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts—’cause you will get taken to court—and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’ ” Historians dispute whether Jackson actually said that. The quote’s provenance aside, by citing it Mr. Vance reveals an apparent contempt for the authority of the judicial branch of government.
When a politician tells you something, my advice is to believe it. Neither Vance nor Donald J. Trump is hiding the ball. In various ways, and in various contexts, they have each indicated that they do not believe in what is commonly called the "rule of law." They do not believe that our Chief Executive is actually bound by what the Constitution says.
Just in case this has escaped anyone's notice, the Constitution essentially gives the president ONE major assignment, and here it is (emphasis added):
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
In other words, our president is, in fact, an "executive" officer. The president is our "Chief Executive." The president "presides" over the operations of our government, but the president doesn't decide what the rules are, or what the law is, or what the government should do. The "Legislative Branch" does that. The president must "take Care that the laws be faithfully executed." It is not the president who determines what the laws are, or what they should be!
Galston, in other words, is right. Mr. Vance (and Mr. Trump, too, if you have been following what our former president has been saying) is fundamentally off base with respect to what a president is supposed to do, and what a president is "authorized" to do.
If you decide to take my advice, and "believe" what these candidates tell you, then you have a pretty easy choice on November 5th. You just don't vote for people who say that they believe that they don't have to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," but have the ability to decide what the laws should be.
As a postscript, we need to be careful, too, as we vote for Senators and Members of Congress. We need to be sure that we are voting to put people in office who understand what their duty is. It's not to do what the president tells them to do.
Quite the opposite!
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