Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Is there a limit to the number of presidential executive orders ?
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Not really, and if we are being fair it is pretty clear that both Bush and Alabama paved the way for Trump to do everything in this way belt expanding the traditional reach of executive orders considerably over their own 8-year terms. It's a pickle, because it's the only real way for the President to do anything in a policy sense (unilaterally anyway) and waiting for Congress to do something sensible is sort of like waiting for a bear to dance. You can teach him to do it, but it takes a long time, he doesn't want to do it, and at the end of that process "success" kind of looks like an unexpected new brand of failure.
But on the other hand, the US is SUPPOSED to have a weak executive. That is how the system is designed. Weighing it down with piles of executive orders is sort of an end-run around the constitutional separation of powers. But it really isn't fair to blame Trump for that, at least not completely. There has been significant "executive-creep" over the last 16 years, which at the time was probably justified (or may have seemed justified anyway) by Congressional gridlock. Now everyone reaps what they have sown, I guess.