Doing whatever he can get away with

Jonathan Goldberg writes at Newsmax,

There has been a lot of talk — almost all of it accurate — about how Barack Obama's presidency has fueled the rise of Donald Trump.

The president's fans hate this talk, for understandable reasons. They see the president as dignified and cerebral. They see Trump as crude and bigoted, a "short-fingered vulgarian," as Graydon Carter famously put it.

The argument that Obama paved the way for Trump takes many forms. He "lowered the bar" for presidential qualifications, argues Peggy Noonan. Trump's Don Rickles act, writes Michael Barone, reflects "the coarseness of Obama's non-stop insults of Republicans and anyone who does not share his views and priorities."

"It is no accident that President Obama's America has given rise to Donald Trump," writes Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist. "It is an America that is more tribalist, where people feel more racially and religiously divided; more politically correct, where people feel less free to speak their minds; and it is an America where trust in the nation's elites, whose skills are credentialed but unproven, are at historic lows."

The problem: Obama the constitutional lawyer hasn't read his job description; it says the president should "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Obama doesn't really care. He sees his job as doing the things he wants to do and being the sort of president his biggest fans want him to be. That's why over the holidays, he reportedly ordered his lawyers to "scrub" the laws to find ways he can take new unilateral action against gun ownership

Well, two can play at that game.

Enter Trump, via his fabulous escalator. The GOP front-runner isn't openly contemptuous of the Constitution; it just doesn't enter his thinking very much. If he believes something is worth doing, he says he will do it. He makes little effort to explain how he will get Congress to agree, never mind write the laws the president is supposed to faithfully execute. And that's the way Trump's fans like it.

...It seems a sure bet that a President Trump would follow FDR's — and Obama's — example in doing whatever he could get away with.

Read more here.