Personnel is Policy
29th October 2024
If Donald Trump wins the presidency for a second time, the number of things he could potentially focus on will vastly exceed the amount of time available. During a presidential term that will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—and hence of the United States of America—one obvious priority should be to ensure a spirited celebration of our glorious Founding, not a woke grievance session focused on claims of “systemic racism.” But beyond that, Trump will have to pick and choose among various competing priorities.
Of course, the primary responsibility of any president—and one that has often been neglected of late—is to execute the laws as written. The first line of Article II of the Constitution, after all, vests the president with the executive power. Simply fulfilling this basic constitutional requirement would reap huge dividends for the American citizenry, especially on the issue of immigration. Our current border crisis has been fueled—and deliberately so—by the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce federal immigration laws (specifically its failure to enforce the legal requirement that those seeking asylum be detained until their claims can be adjudicated).
Beyond faithfully enforcing the law (backed by a competent legal team that believes in that mission), Trump should quickly undo all of the damaging executive orders that President Biden has issued. Executive orders are supposed to be guidance to executive branch personnel about how to enforce the law. Biden’s orders and proclamations, however, have often veered into quasi-lawmaking, such as his kingly mask and vaccine decrees and his edict that student loan debt should be transferred from borrowers to taxpayers as a whole.