Washington – Attorney General William Barr, in a provocative speech to the Federalist Society, said voters put President Trump in office with knowledge of his agenda and those who oppose him are trampling on the Constitution's Article II executive powers:
“While the president has certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook and punctilio, he was up front about what he wanted to do and the people decided they wanted him to serve as president...”
Two observations:
First, that's not the 2016 election I recall. Many Trump votes were a protest in the face of what was widely predicted to be a Hillary Clinton victory, without much regard to his agenda. They simply weren't going to vote for her. Moreover, Clinton won the popular vote decisively; it was the electoral college that delivered the election to Trump.
This was also the election in which some voters, in the famous formulation, took Trump seriously but not literally, and others literally but not seriously. The former prevailed. This was an election that was decided by voters who did not take the Trump agenda literally.
Then there were the Trump voters who thought once he was elected, he would start acting like a president, because his campaign was based on his experience as an entertainer and he would moderate his behavior upon inauguration.
That's why Trump was elected in November, 2016. There is simply not much of a record to support the Barr thesis; of all the reasons people voted for Trump, his literal agenda was not high on the list.
Second, I see that there is conservative push-back against the Barr notion that the concept of unitary executive (that the president leads the executive branch) also extends to executive primacy in the context of separation of powers. Barr goes too far, they say, in eroding the Constitution's checks and balances; he is sounding like an authoritarian, not a conservative.
Charles Fried, solicitor general in the Reagan administration, reacted to Barr this way:
“Conservatism is respect for the rule of law. It is respect for tradition. The people who claim they’re conservatives today are demanding loyalty to this completely lawless, ignorant, foul-mouthed president.”
Stuart Gerson, an official in the George W. Bush administration, was not so blunt, but put it this way:
I'm glad Attorney General Barr made his attention-getting, illuminating speech to the Federalist Society. He has thrown out history; he has thrown out his party's tradition. It gives us all a glimpse into what lies ahead, and it's not conservatism.
