Subject: Re: Replace FDR with Trump
As a people, we can grant extraordinary powers during emergencies, but Trump does it on whim using trumped up pretexts, and, as a Constitutional Democratic Republic, we need limitations to be respected.

I think that misses the main thrust of his changes.

Trump's major change to the government isn't in the substance of what he's doing (though that's important). It's in completely reorienting the focus of the Executive. If I had to summarize the most important policy of the Trump Administration, it would be this:

Anyone who takes actions that contradict the priorities of the President will be fired.

That's the major change. For the last 80 years, since the Administrative state was created, staff at the Executive have tried to implement the priorities of both the President and the Congress (both current and past, as expressed through statutes and programs). Congress has current power. And Congress' past decisions to do things like create a government program to do X, or establish a Department to do Y, were also things to be furthered even if they were not the current President's priorities.

Trump came in and said, "No more. You only do what the President's priorities are, and nothing else." Don't worry about pissing off Congress, don't worry about pissing off the constituencies that like/support the things that Congress has done in the past. That's not your job. You don't make those calls - you don't get to affect the power dynamic between the Executive and the Legislative branch, or decide that one group's priorities are the right ones to promote in any given situation. If you contradict my priorities, you're out. I get to make the call over what priorities to elevate over what Congress wants (present or past), not you.

Democrats have tried to characterize that as autocracy or anti-democratic...but it's really not. The President is elected to wield the power of the Executive, and he's always had the power to tell his Cabinet officials (and by extension the rest of the government) that they're supposed to only follow his instructions and not independently reach conclusions based on a desire to placate or accommodate Congress. No President has really ever done so, because Congress does have a lot of power to strike back at a President if it wants to - so you usually don't want your Cabinet officials to tell them to pound sand, because you'll need them one day. But the core argument isn't really anti-democratic, because the President is himself elected and is elected to that specific role. Congress is elected, too, but their role is legislative and budgetary and (most importantly) collective. "Get the votes to pass a bill and that's how you can give instructions to federal employees" is the organizing principle - and that's not entirely wrong.

Actually, I should say that Congress has a lot of power over a Democratic President. Because Democratic Presidents (usually) want something from Congress during their term, so they had to bargain with them. But because of the way the parties have aligned and re-aligned over the decades, we're now in a position where the Republican party's issue set doesn't really align much with wanting further Congressional action on anything legislative.

This is a sea change in how the Executive is run. It fundamentally restructures the direction that the administrative state looks to for making decisions, away from looking at both Congress and the President and just to looking at the President.