Opposing view: Trump has real power, and he should use it

Constitutional self-government has fallen on hard times, and Trump haters think he’s the problem. He’s not. The problems have been building for the past century, and President Donald Trump is a salutary response of a sovereign people attempting to regain control of their lives.

That’s what makes criticism of Trump’s use of executive power so curious — and so unconvincing. His decision to protect our country’s border is seen as extraordinary by distant elites in a way that sending Americans to die to protect the borders of Syria and Iraq never was.

Trump has been criticized for demanding that Federal Aviation Administration officials take action on the 737 Max aircraft, which could save American lives, even though he is their boss. And critics think he is wrong when he calls for examination of the Big Tech monopolists like Amazon, Facebook and Google for violations of anti-trust law. Should they be allowed to do things the robber barons could only dream of?

Power unused is power lost. Worse, it’s an abrogation of the responsibilities Trump has to the country and to the people who elected him.

The administrative state — that vast network of government agencies that runs our lives without supervision from the elected branches of government — is where the real power of government resides. People in these agencies are truly “permanent Washington” and know that if they dislike an order, they can ignore it until the next election, secure in the knowledge that elected politicians come and go but that they, the bureaucrats, never leave.

That’s not the system of government we’re supposed to have. Voters want to take back power from the unelected, unaccountable deep state. The same thing is happening all over world from Brexit in Britain to the election of new governments in places like Italy, Austria and Brazil. What Trump has learned, at least in part, is that the bully pulpit is not enough. He has real, constitutional power, and he should use it.