Let’s check in on the Toddler in Chief thesis!

Let’s check in on the Toddler in Chief thesis!

What does the latest Bob Woodward book tell us about the state of the U.S. presidency?

By Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything.

Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Most social scientists want their arguments to have sustainable explanatory power. I am no exception. Today seems like a good day to revisit the two hypotheses I proposed in “The Toddler in Chief.”

In that book, on the very first page no less, I made one simple and one not so simple argument: “The simple argument is that Donald Trump behaves more like the Toddler in Chief than the Commander in Chief.” I mostly relied on the hashtag #ToddlerinChief thread for empirical support.

This argument most definitely holds up. In the past few months there has been story after story after story after story after story after story after story providing additional data proving Trump possessed the emotional maturity of a petulant 2-year-old.

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Heck, that can be demonstrated just in the stories about the forthcoming Robert Costa and Bob Woodward book “Peril” that were reported Tuesday. According to CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart, Trump’s CIA director, Gina Haspel, was perturbed by Trump’s refusal to concede the election, telling Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, “The whole thing is insanity. He is acting out like a 6-year-old with a tantrum.” She also feared Trump launching an attack on Iran in anger, asking Miller, “This is a highly dangerous situation. We are going to lash out for his ego?”

My Washington Post colleague Isaac Stanley-Becker has additional details confirming Trump’s colossal immaturity. When Vice President Mike Pence told Trump that he could not overturn the electoral college reports, Trump responded, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” Stanley-Becker also reports, “Trump’s fragile ego drove many decisions by the nation’s leaders, from lawmakers to the vice president. ... Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was so worried that a call from President-elect Biden would send Trump into a fury that the then-Majority Leader used a backchannel to fend off Biden.”

So that hypothesis still generates robust results: Trump is most definitely still a toddler.

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What about my second, less simple argument? In the book I argued, “having a President who behaves like a toddler is a more serious problem today than it would have been, say, fifty years ago. Formal and informal checks on the presidency have eroded badly in recent decades.” Joe Biden is not a toddler, but if the presidency continues to face minimal constraints, a future immature president could wreak even greater carnage than Trump.

Given that Democrats currently control both the House and Senate, has Biden’s power been unchecked? The answer here is more muddled. Costa and Woodward’s book suggests that Milley was far more deferential to Biden’s edicts on Afghanistan than he was to Trump. On the other hand, short of following illegal orders the military is supposed to defer to the president on these matters.

In other areas where Biden has attempted to use expansive executive powers, however, he has met pushback. His administration attempted to extend the eviction ban in early August due to the pandemic. The Supreme Court overruled that action in late August, however, with the unsigned majority opinion stating, “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

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The most interesting data point has yet to occur. As the New York Times’ Charlie Savage notes, “nearly nine months after Mr. Trump left the White House, the legal rules that govern the presidency have yet to be tightened.” But Savage reports that congressional Democrats are working to pass legislation designed to prevent abuses of presidential power that Trump committed while in office:

The bill is expected to cover nearly a dozen issues. Among them: It would make it harder for presidents to bestow pardons in bribery-like contexts and to spend — or secretly freeze — funds contrary to congressional appropriations. It would speed up lawsuits over congressional subpoenas. And it would strengthen the Constitution’s ban on presidents taking “emoluments,” or payments, from foreigners. ...

The White House supports many of the ideas, according to people familiar with its talks with House Democrats. They include keeping the statute of limitations from expiring while presidents are in office and temporarily shielded from prosecution; enhancing whistle-blower protections; banning foreign elections assistance; and tightening limits on whom presidents can appoint to temporarily fill vacant positions that normally require Senate confirmation.

“The prior administration’s routine abuse of power and violation of longstanding norms posed a deep threat to our democracy,” said Chris Meagher, a White House spokesman. “We strongly support efforts to restore guardrails and breathe life back into those longstanding norms. We’re working with Congress to do that, and we’re also building that commitment into every single thing this administration does.”

Savage also reports that the Biden administration has balked at other requests, such as disclosing information about contact between the White House and the Justice Department. And it remains unclear whether the bill becomes law. Still, this seems like a promising reversal of trend.

Eighteen months after “The Toddler in Chief” was published, Trump continues to confirm his radical immaturity. That hypothesis will likely never be disproven. The unchecked growth of presidential power, however, is another story. It sure would be great if that argument turned out to be falsified in the next few years.