Exagero meu, eu sei, pois já tivemos outros debates muito importantes do mesmo teor, ou seja, a capacidade executiva do presidente americano, como no caso dos poderes de guerra (suscitados pela intervenção no Vietnã, e o desastre que se seguiu), com a consequente limitação dos poderes do presidente. Mas a situação atual não deixa de ser interessante.
Diferentemente dos sistemas parlamentaristas, os sistemas presidencialistas tendem a aumentar indevidamente o poder dos prresidentes, sobretudo em conexão com conflitos militares ou crises econômicas, o que significa, no caso americano, a Guerra Civil, ou de Secessão, a Grande Guerra, a depressão dos anos 1930 (FDR executiva measures), a Segunda Guerra, e todas as guerras do período da Guerra Fria. Eventually, ou oportunamente, o Congresso ou a Suprema Corte restabelecem o equilíbrio dos poderes entre si.
O próprio presidente Wilson, que prometeu manter os EUA fora da Grande Guerra e acabou tendo de mandar tropas para a Europa, escreveu, quando era presidente da Universidade Princeton (ou antes) um livro chamado Congressional Government, destacando justamente essa característica do presidencialismo americano, que atribui o essencial dos poderes aos representantes do povo, e não o presidente. Fez muito bem e Trump vai aprender agora a se comportar (ou não, pos ele é um Grande Idiota).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Trump
signs Russia sanctions bill, calls it 'seriously flawed'
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BY JAMES HOHMANN
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with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
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THE BIG IDEA: The White House has
accumulated vastly more power than the men who wrote the Constitution
intended, and one unintended consequence of the Trump presidency may
be a long-term rebalancing between the three branches of the federal
government.
Congress has repeatedly rolled over for
presidents of both parties. Democrats looked the other way
as Barack Obama used his pen and phone in sometimes constitutionally
dubious ways. Republicans trusted George W. Bush to do the right
thing, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks.
If they were put on truth serum, very few
lawmakers of either party would tell you that they trust Donald Trump
to do the right thing if left to his own devices. Especially
vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin.
That’s why they almost unanimously passed a
bill that ties his hands. Congress gave itself a 30-day
review period to vote down any changes Trump tries to make to Russia
sanctions.
Trump reluctantly signed the measure
yesterday to avoid the humiliation of a veto override. But he issued
two defiant signing statements, saying the
“seriously flawed” legislation includes “a number of clearly
unconstitutional provisions” by “limiting the Executive’s flexibility
… to strike good deals.”
“The Framers of our Constitution put foreign
affairs in the hands of the President,” Trump said. “This bill will
prove the wisdom of that choice.”
That comment represents a bold assertion of
presidential power and reveals a breathtakingly simplistic view regarding
the separation of power. The Constitution, of course,
gives Congress the power to declare war and ratify treaties.
Constitutional law experts agree that
Congress is well within its rights. Michael Glennon from the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts said Trump's statement
is based on a “gross misreading” of case law. “That’s obviously a
misguided interpretation of his constitutional authority,” he told Abby Phillip. “Congress
has very broad authority over foreign commerce. It’s explicitly given
the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. It could
have, if it desired, imposed those sanctions without giving the
president any waiver authority whatsoever.”
Senate passes Russia sanctions bill
-- The balance of power has
ebbed and flowed through history. The president claims fresh
powers during wartime. Congress has reasserted itself after
executive overreach, from Vietnam (e.g. the War Powers Act) to Watergate.
Ronald Reagan’s presidency was nearly derailed when his
administration funded the contras in Nicaragua, despite the Boland
Amendment that barred him from doing so.
-- “Trump is something the
nation did not know it needed: a feeble president whose manner can
cure the nation’s excessive fixation with the presidency,”
conservative thought leader George F. Will wrote in an important column over the weekend
that got overshadowed by news of the latest White House shake-up: “Fortunately,
today’s president is so innocent of information that Congress cannot
continue deferring to executive policymaking. And because this
president has neither a history of party identification nor an
understanding of reciprocal loyalty, congressional Republicans
are reacquiring a constitutional — a Madisonian — ethic. It
mandates a prickly defense of institutional interests, placing those
interests above devotion to parties that allow themselves to be
defined episodically by their presidents. … Furthermore, today’s president
is doing invaluable damage to Americans’ infantilizing assumption
that the presidency magically envelops its occupant with a nimbus of
seriousness. … For now, worse is better. Diminution drains this
office of the sacerdotal pomposities that have encrusted it.”
John McCain speaks to journalists at the
Capitol last Thursday night. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
-- A bipartisan chorus of
leaders in Congress swiftly pushed back on Trump yesterday.
John McCain, the chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the signing statement
“misplaced.” Making a rhetorical allusion to the signing
statement put out by the White House, he wrote: “The Framers of our
Constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of
government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice.”
“On this critical issue of national
security policy, it was the Congress that acted in the spirit of
national unity to carry out the will of the American people,” the
2008 Republican presidential nominee wrote in a statement from Arizona,
where he’s battling brain cancer. “And that is why it is critical
that the President comply with the letter and spirit of this
legislation and fully implement all of its provisions. Going
forward, I hope the President will be as vocal about Russia’s
aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this
legislation.”
“Today, the United States
sent a powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held
accountable for their actions,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)
said in his own statement about Trump signing the bill. “We will
continue to use every instrument of American power to defend this
nation and the people we serve.”
-- Generally, Republicans are
talking much more strongly about the separation of powers than they
were in the months after Trump took office.
“We work for the American
people. We don’t work for the president,” said Sen. Tim Scott
(R-S.C.), in an interview with Sean Sullivan.
“We should do what’s good for the administration as long as that
does not in any way, shape or form make it harder on the American
people.”
“President Trump won. I respect his
victory. I want to help him with health care and do other things
that I think we can do together like cut taxes,” added Sen. Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.). “I’ll push back against ideas I think are bad
for the country, like changing the rules of the Senate. And
that’s the way I’m going to engage the president.”
Graham has always been
critical of Trump, but other once-outspoken Republican defenders of
the president are sounding more critical. When he was
asked to respond to The Post's report about the president's role in
dictating Donald Jr.'s misleading statement about his meeting with a
Russian national at Trump Tower, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho)
told CBS News: “I guarantee you
there were phone calls in addition to those emails, and I want to
hear all of it before I answer the question you put to me.”
Sanders: Trump signed Russia sanctions
bill in the 'interest of national unity'
But Trump’s statement on the Russia
bill, naturally, included a Trumpian flourish that is very unusual
in a normally legalistic document: “I built
a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a
big part of the reason I was elected,” he said. “As President, I
can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”
U.S. abandons Moscow
diplomatic properties
-- Validating Congress’s
decision to tie his hands, though, Trump continues naively
playing footsie with Putin.
Russia retaliated against
the United States for the sanctions over the weekend, ordering
the U.S. embassy to reduce its staff by 755 people and seizing
U.S. diplomatic properties. Even as he took the time
to attack Golf Magazine on Twitter last night, though, Trump
has yet to issue any kind of statement on Putin’s affront to our
country. The silence has been deafening, especially against
the backdrop of Trump refusing to fully accept the consensus of
the intelligence community that Moscow interfered in the 2016
election.
The prime minister of
Russia trolled Trump (on Twitter and in English!), and even that
couldn’t get a rise out of him:
Former U.S. ambassador
to Russia and Stanford professor Mike McFaul replied:
Vice President Pence
speaks in Montenegro. (Stevo Vasiljevic/Reuters)
-- Trump’s desire to
appease Moscow puts him at odds with most members of his own
national security team – including Mike Pence, who returned
overnight from a 3 1/2-day trip through Eastern Europe. “At nearly every stop, the vice
president spoke forcefully about the specter of Russian
aggression, talked of ‘peace through strength,’ and reaffirmed
the United States’ commitment to the North American Treaty
Organization, reiterating its cornerstone pledge that an
attack on one nation is an attack on all,” reports Ashley
Parker, who traveled aboard Air Force Two.
Many of the interested
parties, including the Baltic States and the Russians, aren’t
sure to what degree Pence truly speaks for Trump, which means
that his hardline policy pronouncements don’t pack the punch
they otherwise might.
In an interview with Parker yesterday,
Pence said Trump is taking a “we’ll see” attitude toward
Russia and said the administration hopes the sanctions
will lead to an improved relationship.
Tom Cotton listens to Trump
speak at the White House yesterday. (Jabin Botsford/The
Washington Post)
-- Republicans in
Congress are now readying for round two with Trump on Russia,
as hawks search for additional ways to box in the president. “Language in key defense bills in both
the House and Senate would require the military to begin
developing medium-range missiles banned by a 1987 treaty,” Politico’s Bryan Bender reports.
“Supporters of the provisions — including Republican Sen. Tom
Cotton of Arkansas — assert that Russia's recent deployment of
an intermediate-range missile in violation of the treaty
requires the U.S. to respond in kind. … The House’s language,
included in the National Defense Authorization Act passed last
month, would create a program for developing a land-based
missile that is banned by the INF Treaty. The Senate will soon
debate a similar provision in its version of the defense
policy bill, which would set aside $65 million and also
require the military to reintroduce a missile capable of
traveling between 500 and 5,500 kilometers — a weapon that
both Cold War rivals phased out three decades ago.”
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