POLITICS: Trump’s Congressional address reveals Washington’s inertia and inaction

President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress last week — his first since returning to the White House. And it was the kind of spectacle you would expect it to be: Trump was up there giving a more or less standard rally speech.

When he wasn’t blaming Joe Biden for the high price of eggs, the president was moaning that the Democrats wouldn’t clap for him, boasting about the “Gulf of America” and handing out Junior Secret Service decoder rings to the kids.

Viewers, according to polls, were mostly into it.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were projecting idealistic youthful vigor by dispatching a wizened old man, 77-year-old Rep. Al Green, to wave his cane at the president and rage about — what? The memory of Jan. 6? the betrayal of Ukraine? The ballooning national debt?

No! no! no! no! — hypothetical cuts to certain welfare programs. Very on-brand for Green’s party. The rest of the Democrats sat there with little paddles in their hands as though they were grumpily bidding in the world’s saddest charity auction. 

The next morning, the justices of the Supreme Court, having duly shaken hands and smiled politely at the president the evening before, handed down a ruling reminding the president that he still lacks certain powers. In this case, the power to unilaterally suspend foreign aid appropriated by Congress just because he feels like it.

The president takes an oath to see to the faithful execution of the laws of the United States — not the laws of which he approves. The president does not make laws. Congress does that. The Supreme Court remembers this, even if Congress appears to be forgetting.

There is bipartisan consensus in Congress on one point: the refusal of its members to do their jobs.

Congressional Democrats in the main are permanent adolescents forever held hostage by nostalgia for the protest culture of the 1960s and 1970s — two decades that were, save for the music of the first and the cinema of the second, the cultural nadir of American history. 

Everybody in Washington enjoys a tidy trifecta — one party controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress — but important legislation has been enacted in spite of thorny interbranch and intramural politics.

Think of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the compromises that produced the budget surplus of the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich era. These were not imposed by fiat — they were negotiated.

That is how government in a constitutional republic is supposed to work. 

Lyndon Johnson, a former senator, did not get his civil-rights act by waving a cane at his opponents.

He did it by being good at politics.

And President Johnson needed to be good at politics — Congress, at the time, was still acting like Article I of the Constitution — the one that vests lawmaking power within its hallowed chambers. 

Today, Congress is mostly what my Dispatch colleague Jonah Goldberg calls the “parliament of pundits,” a bunch of would-be influencers who play for social-media clout and cable-news hits while doing very little in the way of lawmaking, punting that over to the president and his “executive orders.”  

The Supreme Court will step in every now and then (Trump and foreign aid, Joe Biden and student loans) and remind the president that “I am the law” is a line from “Judge Dredd” and not a line from the Constitution describing how the presidency is supposed to work. 

Democrats and Republicans in Congress are similar in that neither party seems to be able or willing to do ordinary politics inside the national legislature; they are different in that Democrats fail on this score because they are so imbecilically sanctimonious that all they can do is lord over the opposition when they have power — and snivel when they don’t.

Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t doing legislative politics because they prefer instead to let Trump take the lead — and the flak — while they raise money and lounge in the comfort of their mostly uncompetitive districts and states. 

There is a reason Congress is the Article I branch. Our constitutional architecture sets up Congress — not the president, not the Supreme Court — as the supreme federal authority, with the power to spend money, impose taxes, declare war, ratify treaties, approve or reject high-level appointments in the executive and judicial branches, etc.

Congress has the power to remove a president or a Supreme Court justice — the president does not have the power to remove even the most obscure member of the House or the most insufferable senator.

Neither does the Supreme Court.

With respect to my fellow Texan, Rep. Green can do more than wave his cane and moan about transfer payments.

He and his fellow representatives and senators of both parties could, if they so desired, start acting like they run the place — because, as it turns out, they do, at least on paper.

Because it is up to Congress to ensure that our Constitution is something more than a piece of paper. But, for now, Congress simply refuses to do its job.

That is lazy and foolish — but more to the point, can ultimately become dangerous.