Opinion: Presidents of the Past Got Us Here

“Presidents of the past have handed President Trump everything he needed to basically ruin our Democracy”

How did we get here? How is there so much chaos? How can one man do so much fundamental damage to a country to the point where it’s at a constitutional crisis? How can one man, one office, one title, one mind, do this?

As I sit here and doomscroll on social media, I see reposts of ICE agents abusing their power because one man has imbued them with the power to separate families. Families are being separated like we are back in the slavery era in America. I sit here with this notion on my mind, and history echoes.

I don’t just put the blame on the American system. There is a lot of blame to go around as to how we got here. But, I place it on the leadership of these divided States—the President. Not just President Trump because there’s a lot of blame on him, obviously. But I also place fault on his predecessors. Presidents of the past have handed President Trump everything he needed to basically ruin our democracy through their expansions of presidential power and disregard of their ethical and moral obligations to the Constitution.

It is true nobody could have predicted all that has happened in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected. But let’s take this back, way back to before this country even had the Constitution. Back to the original framework of the United States, the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” that’s word for word in the document. But to tell the truth, we were never equal. African-descended people were excluded from these words intentionally—and were enslaved at the time. Future president Thomas Jefferson debated on adding the topic of slavery but feared alienating the Southern representatives in the Continental Congress. This act started the tradition of kicking the problem down the line for the next generation to solve. 

The topic of slavery was a boiling issue that just wouldn’t go away. But, every President, including George Washington, chose to ignore the topic of slavery until Abraham Lincoln couldn’t ignore it anymore due to the Civil War. The Civil War was about slavery no matter what anybody says. Abraham Lincoln wanted to find a way to end the Civil War without having to end slavery especially considering the pressure from other countries that depended on Southern exports like cotton. 

Lincoln also expanded the powers of the executive branch at the time by asserting broad executive authority by suspending habeas corpus and issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. This is one of the first real instances of the expansion of executive power.

The playbook isn’t new but, like I said earlier: “History echoes.”

We can fast forward to Ronald Reagan. He pioneered the modern use of executive orders.  In total, President Reagan signed 1,118 executive orders. Most were to get around Congress. That sounds very familiar, I wonder where I've heard that one before? The playbook isn’t new but, like I said earlier: “History echoes.”

Following Reagan’s example, presidents after him have used the ‘executive order’ to get around the rules. Bill Clinton used this power for executive privilege and to push his ideological policy; George W. Bush used this power for the unilateral executive theory to exert his control over national security after 9/11, drastically giving the federal government more power and surveillance. Barack Obama used this power to implement DACA and the drone strikes in the Middle East. 

If you look carefully, all the things President Trump has either dismantled or expanded were given to or used by presidents of the past. In their defense, to varying degrees for some presidents, to actually help the people where Congress could not.  

President Trump has used executive orders to expand the power of the executive branch through domestic means by using ICE—taking and twisting a page from Obama and Bush. He has used executive orders to help out corporations and hurt the American people— taking a page from Reagan. He has also refused to turn over documents of the Epstein files and refuses to work with Congress, specifically the other side of the aisle—taking a page out of Reagan and Clinton’s book. 

The framework for President Trump’s actions has been unintentionally laid by his predecessors.  Their choices, for better or worse, have doomed our democracy by leaving unchecked power in the hands of a known abuser.