Trump must meet norms of public service.
Trump’s biggest threat is to the unwritten norms that hold our government and country together
There was a moment at Donald Trump’s chaotic first press conference as President-elect last week that offered a disturbing insight into the dark place to which America is headed over the next four years.
In responding to a question about disentangling himself from his business empire, Trump basically told the assembled journalists that he doesn’t need to do it.
“I have a no-conflict-of-interest provision as President,” said Trump. “So I could actually run my business, I could actually run my business and run government at the same time.”
While Presidents and other federal officials are, in fact, bound by ethics and federal disclosure rules, Trump is actually not completely wrong here. He has no legal obligation to separate himself from his various business enterprises or even his larger financial holdings.
What requires a President or any public official to disentangle themselves and avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest are the norms, customs and traditions that have long guided the actions of America’s political leaders.
Understanding these unwritten rules of propriety and their larger personal responsibilities in the context of public service, Presidents and hundreds of other public officials have created blind trusts, divested their holdings or released financial information. Because that is the basic tradition of modern American politics.
This willingness to abide by such political norms is perhaps the most important feature of American governance. Our Constitution, our laws and our governing institutions provide a basis for the proper functioning of democracy. But these institutions are only as strong as the willingness of political leaders to abide by them and to ensure that they don’t become debased or corrupted.
Herein lies the fundamental problem that is now upon us with a Trump presidency. He doesn’t respect these norms. He doesn’t understand them. And the party of which he is a member, which controls Congress, has shown no interest in ensuring that he lives up to them.
As a result, destructive behavior, from directly profiting off public service and intimidating and investigating political enemies in a manner that would have made Richard Nixon blanch to bringing back torture and attacking the very credibility of news organizations who report things that Trump doesn’t like, could become fully normalized.
None of this should come as a surprise. After all, Trump’s presidential campaign was a near-daily, and fairly gleeful, exercise in political norm-shredding.