My prediction for the Trump Presidency is still that it will be a (W) Bush Presidency with some Trumpian twists (e.g. infrastructure spending). But there is a worse scenario.

Who thinks that President Obama will say on January 20 that he is NOT stepping down because his “replacement” lost the popular vote and won the electoral college because of Russian hacking?  The whole idea seems farfetched. On the other hand, if PEOTUS Trump loses the election in four years, who thinks he might say the election was rigged and try to stay on? This does not seem farfetched.

So the most important job of Congress is to check-and-balance PEOTUS’s excesses. How should Congress do so? As usual, Roger Myerson is ahead of the rest of us in thinking about this. In a blog post he writes:

America’s constitutional system depends fundamentally on a balanced distribution of power between the separate branches of government. Over the past century, a long expansion in the size and scope of federal agencies has entailed a steady growth of presidential power. Now, with a President-elect who has never exercised public power within constitutional limits, our best hope is that the next four years should be a time for strengthening the effective authority of Congress. For this vital goal, Democrats today should support the constitutional right of congressional majorities to legally direct the policies and actions of the federal government, even when those majorities happen to be Republican.

His blog post makes many points including regarding the paradoxical impact of term limits for Congress and the misuse of the filibuster.

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