{"id":1048,"date":"2018-06-01T13:12:19","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T17:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2018-06-02T13:15:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T17:15:54","slug":"opinion-lets-rain-on-trumps-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"Opinion – Let\u2019s Rain on Trump\u2019s Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Opinion by Greg Weiner<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mr. Weiner was a senior aide to Senator Bob Kerrey before becoming a political scientist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Credit<\/span>Harry Campbell<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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The inflation of presidential power over the last century would mystify James Madison. He predicted that the people would be\u00a0more loyal to legislators<\/a>\u00a0than to the executive and that Congress would\u00a0jealously protect its power<\/a>. Yet Congress has repeatedly ceded its authority in recent decades, and Americans, who have become more intensely partisan, increasingly form political identities based on their loyalty or opposition to the president.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s order for an extravagant\u00a0parade<\/a>\u00a0showcasing American strength \u2014 which the House recently\u00a0endorsed<\/a>\u00a0in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act but which the Senate Armed Services Committee\u00a0did not<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 suggests one explanation for the swollen presidency. Americans and their legislators, being human, are awed by the spectacle of power. That is why those who are suspicious of power should not love this parade, whether or not they like Mr. Trump. The best reason for concern about the parade may be that a president, and not merely this president, proposed it.<\/p>\n

There are more pressing issues of military policy, but this one is an important constitutional symbol. There are, of course, occasions for military celebrations. Victory is usually the chief one. But the pageant of arms being prepared at Mr. Trump\u2019s direction has no particular cause. It is a show of might, plain and simple. As such, it cannot help but adulate the person of the president who will command all that he surveys.<\/p>\n

After-the-fact justifications for the proposed Veterans Day parade included celebrating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I and the century of American power that followed. House Republicans\u00a0resorted<\/a>\u00a0to the old fallback that opposing the parade would disrespect the troops, who for too long \u201chave been victims of political discord.\u201d They have? The military is among the most\u00a0respected<\/a>\u00a0institutions in society, will receive more than $700 billion over the next fiscal year and does not need the additional currency that contemporary politics prizes most: victimhood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The reality is that Mr. Trump got the idea for the parade from Bastille Day festivities he observed in France. But such performances are better suited to the more ornate traditions of Old Europe \u2014 where presidents live in self-described palaces rather than the comparatively modest residence once known as \u201cthe President\u2019s House\u201d \u2014 than to the republican simplicity to which early Americans inclined.<\/p>\n

Of course, ample water has flowed under the constitutional bridge since Thomas Jefferson endorsed republican simplicity by arriving for his inauguration on foot in a frock coat. Mr. Trump is hardly the first president to treasure the grandiose. But as a symbol, the military parade he is organizing should be understood less as a celebration of imperial grandeur than as a ploy for expanding presidential power by advertising it.<\/p>\n

Despite the widespread assumption among his supporters that Mr. Trump is restoring the Constitution, he, like all his recent predecessors, is in this sense the heir not of Jefferson or Madison but rather of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that the president should occupy the center of the constitutional system and take on \u201cthe imagination of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s vision of the presidency has prevailed in no small part because of the fact of global American power, which is necessarily, though not exclusively, concentrated in executive hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n