In This Edition:
- The End of Political Advocacy?
- Links to Chew On Overnight
- Follow me on Bluesky, Threads, or Twitter/X.
Also published on the Epolitics Substack
The End of Political Advocacy?
If Donald Trump is allowed to rule as a king, what’s the point of political advocacy?
Traditional advocacy can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it’s a lobbyist or an issue expert talking with Congressional staff. Sometimes it’s a letter-writing campaign to the mayor. Sometimes it’s a rally at the state capitol. Sometimes it’s a flood of comments on a proposed federal rule. Sometimes it’s a worried mother crying in a chair at a district office.
But in each case, some person or group wants a political, policy or personal result, and they’re reaching out to decisionmakers to try to influence a political, policy or personal outcome. Legislators, mayors, governors and presidents have to stand for election, meaning that they’re usually open to listening to constituents or to interests important to their towns, states or districts. Rarely does an advocacy campaign achieve all its goals, at least in the short term, but we know how they do what they do. Define the issue, pick the target, and find the means to persuade or pressure the right people to make the decision you want.
Advocacy underpins the professional life of DC and most state capitals; an entire ecosystem of lobbyists, lawyers, advocates and activists moves below the public surface of the political process. They have the jobs and causes they do because that’s how advocacy works.
But what happens when it doesn’t? When, for example, the laws made by Congress are rendered advisory, not binding?
I’ve been in the political world since 1991, when I joined the office of a state legislator in Texas. He was a classic conservative Democrat, and our politics did not always align; he later became a good friend and ally of George W. Bush. But even when our opinions differed, I did not doubt his intentions. He genuinely tried to do right by his constituents, and he agonized over budget cuts that hurt people in our district, necessary as they may have seemed at the time.
In that environment, advocacy meant something. Often it took place behind the scenes, over meetings or dinners with lobbyists, but my boss was no pushover — he grilled anyone who tried to get him to adopt a position. And he listened to constituents, even if he might give more credence to the business guy than to the mother on welfare.
The laws we passed in the Texas Legislature were laws. They guided government decisions, and breaking them had consequences.
Trump’s world works in a profoundly different way. To him, laws are annoyances that get in the way of his needs and desires. He doesn’t WANT an independent legislature constraining his choices. He doesn’t want inspectors general meddling in his or his minions’ affairs. He certainly doesn’t want judges telling him what he can and can’t do.
In a world where legislators have to grovel to the president to get money for their constituents that they have ALREADY allocated by law, traditional advocacy loses its meaning. Why bother trying to persuade Congress when Congress’s power depends on how a president feels that day?
Instead, the executive will have all the power, and it should not surprise us that some of Trump’s first actions were to remove the guardrails against public corruption. He WANTS people to have to come to him or his people if they need a policy or program, or if they simply need what they law says they should have. In that world, “advocacy” starts to mean “bribery”, whether it’s in financial form, personal fealty or simple flattery. As Taegan Goddard put it yesterday, already Trump “has transformed routine government appropriations into bargaining chips, traded for loyalty and obedience.”
That’s why the idea of the unitary executive terrifies me. If the president has sole control over the workings of the executive branch, he has the power to change decisions at will and on a whim. Congress — the people’s branch of government — loses control over spending, the most fundamental power it has. And with it, the people lose their ability to directly influence the political process.
Of course, traditional advocacy tools and tactics won’t disappear right away. At the state and local level, advocacy campaigns may still look much like they have for years. But democratic rot would surely work its way from the head down, and in an environment where local officials feel that they can rule any way they want, competitive elections would not survive for long. At that point, democracy is merely a pretense.
In Donald Trump’s America, what good is political advocacy? Bribery, loyalty and flattery are all that will count. The great American experiment will die in its bed, replaced by something colder, meaner, and far more erratic. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Links to Chew On Overnight
[Includes some links also in the essay above]
- One Senator Accidentally Captured Trump’s Corruption of Congress in a Nutshell
- Trump comes close to the red line of openly defying judges, experts say
- Nonprofits Self-Censoring in Wake of Trump Actions
- DOGE Has ‘God Mode’ Access to Government Data. “The president’s special commission now has an unprecedented ability to view and manipulate information at many federal agencies.”
- Republicans caught between Trump and farmers pleading for frozen funds
- ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account
- An Enemy to Its Friends
– cpd
Top image by Pierre Blaché from Pixabay