No. of Recommendations: 9
The biggest hole in the current system seems to me that the main "check" on the executive was the impeachment process, and that Trump demonstrated who easily that breaks down with a popular demagogue.
I don't think that's entirely accurate. The main "checks" on the executive are political and structural. They have to stand for election, and a great deal of the power of government isn't directly in their hands. Impeachment isn't there to prevent maladministration or overstepping the boundaries of the other branches - it's there in case the President commits an actual "high crime or misdemeanor." If the President is doing a terrible job of being President - doing atrocious and awful things that aren't unambiguously "high crimes" - the remedy is to vote him out at the end of his term.
This can be very frustrating, but it's inherent in any system of government. Political power exists. Someone has to wield it. Someone has to be in charge. There isn't alwas another person that you can complain to, that you can appeal to. In our system of government, when it comes to executive power, the President is given the last word on most things. And if he makes terrible choices, that's that. You don't get to "call the manager" and have him overruled. The solution is to make that person subject to politics - to force them to stand for re-election, so that if they do a terrible job the people can vote him out. That's the check on the executive.
The "structural" check is recognizing that political power exists and cannot be destroy - but it can be divided and set against itself. We do that in two ways. Massive amounts of political power in this country sit outside the federal government altogether, in the form of states that are independent sovereigns. So you have lots of powerful political actors who do not owe their power to the federal government, and provide a check on the Executive (most importantly, as we are finding out, by being able to conduct elections for federal offices independently of the federal government). And of course, Congress and the Judiciary are independent of the President - and a lot of what Trump wants to do simply hasn't happened because he can't make Congress do the things he wants. He doesn't have the funding he wants for various things, he doesn't have the tariff power he wants, he doesn't get to appoint the people he wants, he can't get the SAVE act or the ICE funding or the ballroom funding and a bunch of other things, etc.
As much as Trump wants to project the image of a strongman, he actually isn't getting a lot done that will last past his final day in office. He's achieved virtually no legislative agenda, all the stuff he's done via executive order is written in water and can be undone immediately, many of the changes he made in policy that violate statute are over time getting undone as the cases move through the courts, etc. As President he has control over the personnel and physical plant of the government, so he's done some highly visible things like gut USAID and tear down the East Wing and resurface the Reflecting Pool - but those are actually pretty small potatoes in the overall scheme of things.
There are huge downsides to removing vast swatches of the Federal government (like the entire DOJ or Treasury) outside of political accountability. There's reasons why we would want those agencies to be subject to a person who is directly accountable to voters. We won't have a clear understanding of how well the existing checks and balances worked to limit Trump until after he's been out of office for a few years, but I'd be very leery about putting vast amounts of the government outside of normal politics.
