Say what?
The Constitution of the United States is crystal clear. Section 1 of Article II opens with this sentence: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Period. End of instruction. The president of the United States runs the executive branch of the United States government.
Yet, because this president is a Republican — not to mention a Republican named Donald Trump — and not, say, the liberal icon Franklin D. Roosevelt or some other Democrat, the Washington Establishment is foaming.
For background purposes, recall The American Spectator’s own founder R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and his tale from the 1980s of writing a column at the very flagship of the D.C. Establishment — the Washington Post.
His story comes in a book of memoirs, How Do We Get Out of Here?: Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator ― From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump.
Bob tells the story of being asked by the Post’s then-editorial page editor Meg Greenfield to write a regular column for the Post — obviously from a conservative perspective. Bob said yes, and his pen/keyboard was off and running.
And then.
Eventually, the mere fact of publishing a seriously conservative columnist was causing problems with liberal Post readers. “By 1985, I was becoming Meg’s burden,” Bob writes. Then he adds: “The final curtain came down on me with the Post on October 20, 1990, when I saluted Newt Gingrich as ‘our staunch champion of economic growth”
Bob adds in spot-on fashion: “I proved that the First Amendment had its limits with the liberals.”
And indeed it did.
This story from the wayback machine occurs as one sees this current editorial from — yes — the Washington Post Editorial Board written this very week. The headline: “Trump should not be able to fire all agency heads,” with the subtitle, “Congress has the authority to protect some leaders from removal without cause.”
The Post Editorial Board writes:
When President Donald Trump announced this month that he would dismiss Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, he did not claim that Dellinger had done anything wrong. Nor did he give any reason for firing Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board.
The president is attempting to remove these appointees — both of whom he cannot legally remove without cause — simply because he believes he should be able to.
In other words? Because these dismissals are coming at the hands of a Republican President — Trump, no less — the Washington Establishment’s favorite paper is appalled. And they oppose.
But, as one might suspect, there is a different opinion when the political shoe is on the other foot. A point that I can address with personal knowledge.
In the post-election period of 1992, I was working as a young staffer doing congressional relations at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — aka “HUD” in DC shorthand.
The election meant change was at hand. Incumbent President George H.W. Bush had lost his re-election bid to the Democrat presidential nominee, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
It wasn’t long after that election that my GOP colleagues and I received a very nice, short, and to-the-point note from the incoming head of presidential personnel in the dawning Clinton era. The note thanked me for my government service and then told me to wrap up my affairs and be out of my job and the building by noon on Jan. 20, 1993. Which is to say the exact moment Governor Clinton would be sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States. The new head of the executive branch of the U.S. government.
In that capacity, yes indeed, Clinton and his staffers had the right to fire me from my job in the executive branch — HUD in this case. The only “cause” for my dismissal was that I was a Republican.
There was no editorial from the Washington Post Editorial Board putting up a fuss about the new president firing government officials appointed by the old, outgoing president.
None. As Rush Limbaugh might say, “Zip, zero, nada.”
Yet now?
Now that the new president is Republican Donald Trump, the Washington Post Editorial Board suddenly finds its voice and is upset that Trump has the nerve — the nerve! — to do exactly what his predecessors, in my case Bill Clinton, did. Which is to say, in Trump’s case, fire Biden or Democrat appointees in this or that position to which they were appointed.
In short, it is a classic double standard that is all too typical of the Washington Establishment. And, I would argue, it is the kind of reason that has caused the political revolt that resulted in Trump being elected in 2024 in the first place.
Stay tuned.
One suspects there will be more stories of Washington Establishment resistance to Trump coming down the pike and filling various government positions with Trump supporters.
And the Washington Post Editorial Board will suddenly have found its voice.
Imagine that.
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