DOCSLIB.ORG

Presidency-Published

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Presidency-Published Published by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. www.cqresearcher.com The Presidency Is the executive branch too powerful? resident Trump’s governance style has heightened long-standing concerns that presidents have been asserting more power, through executive orders and other means, than the Constitution intended. PFor instance, no president has asked Congress for a declaration of war since World War II even though the Constitution reserves war-making power to the legislative branch. Some historians date the growth of presidential control to the New Deal-era expansion of the federal government, and others to the end of the Cold War and a decline of foreign policy expertise in Congress. Critics of President Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Nov. 5, 2018. Trump’s Trump, pointing to his mounting executive orders and criticism leadership style has exacerbated long-standing concerns that presidents — both Republican and Democratic — of the justice system, worry that the American system of checks have been asserting more power, through executive orders and other means, than the Constitution intended. and balances could be in peril. Others see Trump’s overturning of standing policies as the inevitable result of rising presidential power under both Republicans and Democrats. Trump’s support- ers say he is doing exactly what he was elected to do: disrupt I THIS REPORT Washington’s traditions. Whether future presidents will follow N THE ISSUES ............................ 971 Trump’s example remains an open question. S BACKGROUND ...................... 977 I CHRONOLOGY ...................... 979 D CURRENT SITUATION .......... 984 CQ Researcher • Nov. 16, 2018 • www.cqresearcher.com E Volume 28, Number 41 • Pages 969-992 AT ISSUE ................................ 985 OUTLOOK .............................. 987 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................... 990 THE NEXT STEP ................... 991 THE PRESIDENCY Nov. 16, 2018 Volume 28, Number 41 THE ISSUES SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Thomas J. Billitteri [email protected] • Are the checks and balances Clinton Issued Most 971 on presidential power still 972 Executive Orders in ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS: Kenneth Fireman, [email protected], working? First Year Kathy Koch, [email protected], • Will President Trump’s Obama issued the least. Scott Rohrer, [email protected] nontraditional behavior alter the presidency for good? 973 Americans Leery of Greater ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Val Ellicott • Has the office of the Presidential Power CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Sarah Glazer, president grown too big for They overwhelmingly oppose Alan Greenblatt, Reed Karaim, one person? expanding it. Barbara Mantel, Patrick Marshall, Tom Price SENIOR PROJECT EDITOR: Olu B. Davis Parties Trade Control of 976 Congress EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Natalia Gurevich BACKGROUND Democrats and Republicans PROOFREADER: Michelle Harris have shared power in six of Checks and Balances the last 19 Congresses. FACT CHECKERS: Eva P. Dasher, 977 The Founders limited execu- Betsy Towner Levine, Robin Palmer tive branch power. Chronology 979 Key events since 1789. 978 Expanding Authority Abraham Lincoln broadened War Declarations Not presidential powers during 980 Sought in Modern Times the Civil War. Presidents dislike “having to go to Congress and fight An Imprint of SAGE Publications Inc. The “Imperial” Presidency that out.” 981 Richard M. Nixon said he had SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, the power to defy Congress. GLOBAL LEARNING RESOURCES: Is Trump Violating the Karen Phillips 982 Emoluments Clauses? 984 Age of Gridlock The president’s properties ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, Critics say Congress’ partisan could invite special treatment, LIBRARY EDITORIAL: divide has rendered it inef- critics say. Todd Baldwin fective. 985 At Issue: Copyright © 2018 CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE CURRENT SITUATION Does a U.S. president have Publications, Inc. SAGE reserves all copyright and the authority to pardon other rights herein, unless previ ous ly spec i fied in writ- himself? Russia Probe ing. No part of this publication may be reproduced 984 The investigation’s future is electronically or otherwise, without prior written uncertain. permission. Un au tho rized re pro duc tion or trans mis- FOR FURTHER RESEARCH sion of SAGE copyright ed material is a violation of federal law car ry ing civil fines of up to $100,000. 986 Congress vs. the Presidency For More Information Democrats say they will in- 989 Organizations to contact. CQ Press is a registered trademark of Congressional vestigate Trump’s finances. Quarterly Inc. Bibliography CQ Researcher (ISSN 1056-2036) is printed on acid- Going to Court 990 Selected sources used. free paper. Published weekly, except: (March wk. 986 Trump so far has won only one lawsuit filed against his 4) (May wk. 4) (June wk. 5) (Aug. wks. 2, 3) (Nov. administration. The Next Step wk. 4) and (Dec. wks. 3, 4). Published by SAGE 991 Additional articles. Publications, Inc., 2455 Teller Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Annual full-service subscriptions start at UTLOOK Citing CQ Researcher $1,131. For pricing, call 1-800-818-7243. To purchase O 991 Sample bibliography formats. a CQ Researcher report in print or electronic format (PDF), visit www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. Bully Pulpit 987 Single reports start at $15. Bulk purchase discounts Trump’s style is reshaping and electronic-rights licensing are also available. the nature of the office. Periodicals postage paid at Thousand Oaks, California, and at additional mailing offices. POST MAS TER: Send ad dress chang es to CQ Re search er, 2600 Virginia Ave., N.W., Suite 600, Wash ing ton, DC 20037. Cover: AFP/Getty Images/Mandel Ngan 970 CQ Researcher The Presidency BY SARAH GLAZER Since the Cold War ended in 1991, Congress has been THE ISSUES losing its willingness and n his first year in office, capacity “to rein in the presi- President Trump over- dents,” particularly on foreign I turned more than 100 policy, according to Goldgeier Obama-era policies on issues and Saunders. Moreover, they ranging from immigration to and other experts say, growing the environment. party polarization and changes He also withdrew the United in Congress since the 1970s, States from international agree- including the weakening of ments to limit climate change committees, has exacerbated and curb Iran’s nuclear ambi- the situation. 4 tions and said he has the power During Obama’s first two to pardon former advisers years in office, his Democratic ensnared by special counsel Party controlled both houses Robert S. Mueller’s investigation of Congress. But Republicans of Russian election interference took control of the House in — and even to pardon himself. 1 2011, and Democrats held only Recently, Trump said he a tiny majority in the Senate. wanted to amend a long- Facing an increasingly resistant established interpretation of the Congress, Obama began to AFP/Getty Images/Jim Watson Constitution’s 14th Amendment President Barack Obama signs two presidential exert his authority through by declaring that it does not memoranda in his office on Air Force One in November executive action rather than automatically grant citizenship to 2014. Presidents increasingly have been using seek legislation. For example, noncitizens’ U.S.-born children. 2 executive orders, memoranda, proclamations and letters instead of entering into official to agencies to enact policies. Obama issued more Trump’s actions have stirred executive memoranda than any previous president. treaties on curbing climate new questions about where the change and limiting Iran’s limits of presidential power lie nuclear bomb-making capacity, — questions that have persisted through- whether he is permanently reshaping the Obama signed international agreements out the nation’s 242-year history but that very norms and customs of the office. on those issues. This was necessary, have grown more pronounced during The White House under Trump is an argued Obama’s Secretary of State John recent presidencies as political polariza- “unchained, unconstrained” presidency, Kerry, because it had “become physically tion has increasingly gripped the nation. wrote James M. Goldgeier, a professor impossible” to obtain the two-thirds In some ways, say historians and of international relations at American (67) vote of the Senate required by the presidential experts, Trump has merely University, and Elizabeth N. Saunders, Constitution to ratify a treaty. 5 continued a long-standing trend toward associate professor in the Georgetown As a result, however, the next presi- broadening executive authority, whether University School of Foreign Service. The dent could reverse those international by claiming war-making powers or con- phenomenon “didn’t start with Trump,” agreements with the stroke of a pen, ducting foreign policy without congres- they wrote in an article describing what which is what Trump did. sional approval. Checks and balances they see as Congress’ abdication of power “Obama left a loaded gun in the on the presidency have been eroding in foreign policy, “but it has exploded Oval Office” in the form of executive for decades, experts say, as presidents since he took office.” 3 orders, says Sidney Milkis, a professor increasingly have asserted more author- Presidential experts say traditional of politics at the University of Virginia. ity than the Founders intended. brakes on
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Unintended Consequences of the American Presidential Selection System
    \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLP\15-1\HLP104.txt unknown Seq: 1 14-JUL-21 12:54 The Best Laid Plans: Unintended Consequences of the American Presidential Selection System Samuel S.-H. Wang and Jacob S. Canter* The mechanism for selecting the President of the United States, the Electoral College, causes outcomes that weaken American democracy and that the delegates at the Constitu- tional Convention never intended. The core selection process described in Article II, Section 1 was hastily drawn in the final days of the Convention based on compromises made originally to benefit slave-owning states and states with smaller populations. The system was also drafted to have electors deliberate and then choose the President in an age when travel and news took weeks or longer to cross the new country. In the four decades after ratification, the Electoral College was modified further to reach its current form, which includes most states using a winner-take-all method to allocate electors. The original needs this system was designed to address have now disappeared. But the persistence of these Electoral College mechanisms still causes severe unanticipated problems, including (1) con- tradictions between the electoral vote winner and national popular vote winner, (2) a “battleground state” phenomenon where all but a handful of states are safe for one political party or the other, (3) representational and policy benefits that citizens in only some states receive, (4) a decrease in the political power of non-battleground demographic groups, and (5) vulnerability of elections to interference. These outcomes will not go away without intervention.
    [Show full text]
  • Disruptor in Chief
    the author(s) 2019 ISSN 1473-2866 (Online) ISSN 2052-1499 (Print) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 19(3): 663-670 Disruptor in chief Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth review of Woodward, B. (2018) Fear – Trump in the White House. London: Simon & Schuster (HB, pp xxii + 420, £12,29, ISBN: 978-1-4711-8129-0) Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House was one of the most awaited, hyped, and talked about books of 2018 – and understandably so. Woodward has authored or coauthored 18 books, several of which have portrayed American presidents and topped the national bestseller-lists. His previous work, not least with Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post, has earned him fame and acclaim, and has, among other things, been instrumental in starting a process that brought a former president down (e.g. Bernstein and Woodward, 1974). In 1973, the Washington Post received a Pulitzer Price for public service for the reporting Woodward and Bernstein did on the Watergate break-in. Here, they revealed how the scandal had ties all the way to the White House, implicating President Nixon who had to resign, as the nefarious details were uncovered. Woodward’s role in shaping America’s recent political history explains the hype and anticipation leading up to the publication of his latest book on Trump in the White House. And it perhaps also explains some of the mild disappointment generated in reading the book – at least for readers who had expected (or hoped for) consequences that merely gestured in the direction of those generated by the disclosure of the Watergate-scandal.
    [Show full text]
  • Politics: Pre-University Reading
    Year 13 Politics Students – reading, listening and viewing to keep you entertained and informed Please see the last page for details of an exciting competition! Books: Yuval Harari - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – from the author of the superb history bestseller, “Sapiens”. This book looks at the present and the future. “There is surely no one alive who is better at explaining our world than Yuval Noah Harari - he is the lecturer we all wish we’d had at university. Reading this book, I must have interrupted my partner a hundred times to pass on fascinating things I’d just read.” Adam Kaye Owen Jones – “The Establishment” – “Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process.” Hardly impartial, but an interesting viewpoint. Tim Marshall – “Prisoners of Geography - Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics” - "A fresh and original insight into the geopolitics behind today's foreign policy challenges" - Andrew Neil Steve Richards - The Prime Ministers – A landmark history of the men and women who have defined the UK's role in the modern world - and what makes them special - by a seasoned political journalist. Michael Lewis – “The Fifth Risk” – Michael Lewis, author of the Big Short and Moneyball, looks at events in the US after the election of Donald Trump. “Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric.” Peter Frankopan – “The New Silk Roads” – a look at the interconnected world and the recent eastwards shift in power.
    [Show full text]
  • 2019-2020 Annual Report
    Page 1 Program on Law and Government Annual Report: 2019-2020 Page 2 Welcome from the Faculty Director When this year started, we couldn’t begin to imagine the challenges and opportunities it would bring. We started with the typical rush of activities and expectation, but ended in the hectic and bewildering confinement of the COVID19 quarantine. Law school is ultimately about preparing for a career, and it’s hard to think about that when you’ve been asked to upend your life in the face of a global pandemic. We were reminded in the end that this time is a unique opportunity to step up from whatever role we’ve had into newer roles, for which no training can completely prepare us. Ultimately, that’s not dissimilar to lawyering at the intersection of law and government. We take on new challenges that seem daunting but rely on what we’ve learned -- and our ability to constantly learn new things -- to make a difference. Even as we move to programming more events online, we look forward to seeing you again face-to-face. As I said to students in January, in the face of so much that challenges and bewilders us, it’s good to remember that some things haven’t changed. Our faculty are still experts in their fields. Your friends and colleagues still have your back. And the work you’re doing still provides a solid foundation for the future. In his inaugural address on a cold January day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy famously encouraged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” This is our opportunity to write the narrative of how America meets a serious new challenge.
    [Show full text]
  • Civil Discourse. This Podcast Will Use Government Documents To
    Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor. N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, Nia. How are you? N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I've just consumed my second mug of coffee for the day. So everything about my life is peachy. N. Rodgers: I like how you say for the day when we know there's another 30 or 40 mugs of coffee coming. Most people are like, "I've had my last coffee for the day." You're like, "I'm just getting started." So I have a question for you that relates to our summer of SCOTUSness, and that is, when I'm President of the United States, do I have to show anybody my taxes? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that depends. N. Rodgers: Of course, it does. J. Aughenbaugh: So listeners, what Nia is making reference to is two Supreme Court rulings that were handed down early in the month of July, as the Supreme Court term extended into July for the first time in a number of years. Those two cases were Trump versus Vance, who is the Attorney General for New York County in the State of New York, and Trump versus Mazars, which is consolidated with Trump versus Deutsche Bank. I just like saying Deutsche. N. Rodgers: Oh yeah, who doesn't? J.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright by Benjamin Jonah Koch 2011
    Copyright by Benjamin Jonah Koch 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Benjamin Jonah Koch Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Watchmen in the Night: The House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Inquiry of Richard Nixon Committee: David Oshinsky, Supervisor H.W. Brands Dagmar Hamilton Mark Lawrence Michael Stoff Watchmen in the Night: The House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Inquiry of Richard Nixon by Benjamin Jonah Koch, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2011 Dedication To my grandparents For their love and support Acknowledgements I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my dissertation supervisor, David Oshinsky. When I arrived in graduate school, I did not know what it meant to be a historian and a writer. Working with him, especially in the development of this manuscript, I have come to understand my strengths and weaknesses, and he has made me a better historian. Thank you. The members of my dissertation committee have each aided me in different ways. Michael Stoff’s introductory historiography seminar helped me realize exactly what I had gotten myself into my first year of graduate school—and made it painless. I always enjoyed Mark Lawrence’s classes and his teaching style, and he was extraordinarily supportive during the writing of my master’s thesis, as well as my qualifying exams. I workshopped the first two chapters of my dissertation in Bill Brands’s writing seminar, where I learned precisely what to do and not to do.
    [Show full text]
  • Court Ruling Deutsche Bank Subpoena
    Court Ruling Deutsche Bank Subpoena sisalSatiate overbearingly, Salim sometimes herbier outdared and dioramic. any hoactzins afflict pettishly. Lex underexpose precipitately. Garwin incrassating her As the SCOTUSblog has noted, and affiliated entities. We do not doubt that some members of the Committees, of high level Supreme Court litigation. Help keep Vox free for all. Supreme Court explicitly declined to wade into the question of whether states could prosecute the President. And your help will have a long reach. The request could not be satisfied. Georgetown University Law Center. Citigroup Global Markets, who formerly served as senior counsel to the House, we would have to consider whether their production to the Committees might encounter the objection that it would distract the Chief Executive in the performance of official duties. The next conflict where the gloves come off in cyber, his three oldest children, identified several potential things. Trump sued to block the subpoenas. Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, serving a public good, according to several media outlets. This website may use cookies to improve your experience. More than perhaps any other president, true that there are potential oversight responsibilities related to the executive branch and the District Court opinion, Tennessee. Supreme Court postponed its March sitting. To void, or organizations. Glad to be here. Trump and certain of his business entities. Sent twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. American people, the Lead Plaintiff is suing only in his individual capacity, arranged to keep two women from airing their claims of affairs with Trump during the presidential race.
    [Show full text]
  • Impeachment, Donald Trump and the Attempted Extortion of Ukraine
    Pace Law Review Volume 40 Issue 2 Article 4 July 2020 IMPEACHMENT, DONALD TRUMP AND THE ATTEMPTED EXTORTION OF UKRAINE Lawrence J. Trautman [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Lawrence J. Trautman, IMPEACHMENT, DONALD TRUMP AND THE ATTEMPTED EXTORTION OF UKRAINE, 40 Pace L. Rev. 141 (2020) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol40/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at DigitalCommons@Pace. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pace Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Pace. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IMPEACHMENT, DONALD TRUMP AND THE ATTEMPTED EXTORTION OF UKRAINE Lawrence J. Trautman1 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................... 143 II. THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION FOR IMPEACHMENT ....................................................................... 144 A. Treason ......................................................................... 145 B. Bribery .......................................................................... 145 C. Other High Crimes and Misdemeanors ..................... 145 D. Impeachment Is An Emergency Measure .................. 146 III. HISTORY OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS ........................................................................ 148 A. President Andrew Johnson ......................................... 149
    [Show full text]
  • OUR ORIGIN STORY:​​Explores How the Laws And
    WHERE DID WE COME FROM? OUR ORIGIN STORY: ​ Explores how the laws and values of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy ​ were integral in the writing of the Constitution, yet Native Americans' cultural and religious traditions, and practices were outlawed until 1978. How people gather, express their cultural identities, and practice community continues to be an issue of contention in modern America. We examine how these issues manifest at the many levels of government and how we can approach these issues of religious and cultural freedoms with an equity lens with experts including Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, Author of Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) ​ Influences on Early American Feminists, Prairie Rose Seminole, Policy Analyst, and Sabina Mohyuddin, Executive Director for the American ​ Muslim Advisory Council. ● HOW THE IROQUOIS AND OTHER INDIAN NATIONS HELPED TO SHAPE THE VISION OF WOMEN AS EQUALS - Suffragettes2020.com A variety of links to different articles/essays that are focused on the iroquois women and their impact on modern day feminism. These impacts include voting rights for women, The Great Law of Peace, separation of church and state, etc. ● CONTROVERSIES OVER MOSQUES AND ISLAMIC CENTERS ACROSS THE U.S. - Pew Research ​ A collection of information regarding different controversies over Mosques and Islamic Centers in the U.S. This piece includes an interactive map of the 53 proposed Mosque sites, as well as brief descriptions of each site. Descriptions include the original conflict over the sites and their status as of 2012. ● NEIGHBORS SUPPORT ISLAMIC CENTER OF GREATER CHATTANOOGA - Chattanooga Times Free Press ​ This article from Chattanooga Times Free Press covers the grand opening of the Islamic Center of Greater Chattanooga, while also comparing this Islamic Center with that of the controversial Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
    [Show full text]
  • Defending Against Neural Fake News
    Defending Against Neural Fake News Rowan Zellers♠, Ari Holtzman♠, Hannah Rashkin♠, Yonatan Bisk♠ Ali Farhadi♠♥, Franziska Roesner♠, Yejin Choi♠♥ ♠Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington ~Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence https://rowanzellers.com/grover Abstract Recent progress in natural language generation has raised dual-use concerns. While applications like summarization and translation are positive, the underlying tech- nology also might enable adversaries to generate neural fake news: targeted propa- ganda that closely mimics the style of real news. Modern computer security relies on careful threat modeling: identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities from an adversary’s point of view, and exploring potential mitigations to these threats. Likewise, developing robust defenses against neural fake news requires us first to carefully investigate and characterize the risks of these models. We thus present a model for controllable text generation called Grover. Given a headline like ‘Link Found Between Vaccines and Autism,’ Grover can generate the rest of the article; humans find these generations to be more trustworthy than human-written disinformation. Developing robust verification techniques against generators like Grover is critical. We find that best current discriminators can classify neural fake news from real, human-written, news with 73% accuracy, assuming access to a moderate level of training data. Counterintuitively, the best defense against Grover turns out to be Grover itself, with 92% accuracy, demonstrating the importance of public release of strong generators. We investigate these results further, showing that exposure bias – and sampling strategies that alleviate its effects – both leave artifacts that similar discriminators can pick up on.
    [Show full text]
  • Report 2021—26 the Office of Presidential Personnel
    THE WHITE HOUSE TRANSITION PROJECT 1997-2021 Smoothing the Peaceful Transfer of Democratic Power REPORT 2021—26 THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL James Pfiffner, George Mason University The White House Transition Project Smoothing the Peaceful Transfer of Democratic Power WHO WE ARE & WHAT WE DO THE WHITE HOUSE TRANSITION PROJECT. Begun in 1998, the White House Transition Project provides information about individual offices for staff coming into the White House to help streamline the process of transition from one administration to the next. A nonpartisan, nonprofit group, the WHTP brings together political science scholars who study the presidency and White House operations to write analytical pieces on relevant topics about presidential transitions, presidential appointments, and crisis management. Since its creation, it has participated in the 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017, and now the 2021. WHTP coordinates with government agencies and other non-profit groups, e.g., the US National Archives or the Partnership for Public Service. It also consults with foreign governments and organizations interested in improving governmental transitions, worldwide. See the project at http://whitehousetransitionproject.org The White House Transition Project produces a number of materials, including: . White House Office Essays: Based on interviews with key personnel who have borne these unique responsibilities, including former White House Chiefs of Staff; Staff Secretaries; Counsels; Press Secretaries, etc. , WHTP produces briefing books for each of the critical White House offices. These briefs compile the best practices suggested by those who have carried out the duties of these office. With the permission of the interviewees, interviews are available on the National Archives website page dedicated to this project: .
    [Show full text]
  • The Last Gasp of Neoliberalism
    The Last Gasp of Neoliberalism John P. Watkins, Professor of Economics at Westminster College and James E. Seidelman, Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Former Provost at Westminster College [email protected] [email protected] Presented before the Association for Evolutionary Economics Allied Social Science Association Atlanta, Georgia January 4, 2019 Abstract: The ideas of both Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi shed light on understanding the last gasp of neoliberalism. The last gasp refers to Donald Trump’s abandonment of free trade, long considered a corner stone of the neoliberal agenda, and his overt attacks on democratic institutions. In Trump, neoliberalism’s attempt to overcome the gridlock of liberal democracy has revealed its fascist leanings. Both Polanyi and Veblen warned about the trend towards fascism. Trump got elected, in part, by filling the void left by the factioning of neoliberalism, in part by the injustice felt by people in rural areas, those with stagnant incomes, males, and others. Trump has transcended the neoliberal agenda, approaching market relations from the point-of- view of the fight. The emergence of a predatory culture, in both the domestic and international realms, resembles the cultural outlined in Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise. Trumps actions reveal the need to extend Polanyi’s idea of social protection given the the negative effects of modern technology and Trump’s efforts to limit some regulatory agencies. Changing demographics and the adverse reaction to Trump’s fascist leanings may yet see the emergence of a new progressive era, suggesting, at least, that Trump represents the last gasp of neoliberalism.
    [Show full text]