Cleaning Up After Trump

 YOU CAN DEFEND ANYTHING. Any point of view, any person, place, or thing, whatever. Just ask a good lawyer, or a debating champion.You can argue that the earth is flat, that Charles Manson meant well, that Hitler was good for Germany, anything.That fact of human nature might help explain Trump supporters, for whom the great prevaricator, whose words and deeds seem to most sane people riddled with corruption, can do no wrong. They can even argue that he has broken no laws, and that he sometimes stretches the truth a bit, and might be a tad rough around the edges, but, by damn, he says what he means, and he gets stuff done. What he has, beyond dispute, done constantly, is to behave nothing like a normal president, he has violated all accepted norms for presidential behavior. This is the subject of a new book by Harvard law professor jack Goldsmith called "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency". Goldsmith used to be a Republican, but when Trump got the G.O.P. nomination in 2016, he left the party, and became an independent. he quickly saw, like many Republicans,that the party under Trump would be remade into something unrecognizable, and would abandon many of its traditional values and attitudes. his assessment turned out, of course, to be quite correct. He points out that its not so much a matter of Trump blatantly breaking the law constantly, although he has on several occasions clearly violated the law, but rather, Trump has behaved and spoken in a manner radically different from all previous presidents, mostly in unacceptable ways which, the author argues, must be prevented from ever happening again for the sake of the office and the country. It is not, for instance, illegal for the president to keep his tax returns secret, nor is it illegal for the president to slam people on twitter, or to constantly tell lies. But these are things the American people clearly do not want the president to do. Every time Trump slams somebody publicly, the slamee gets death threats, and needs personal security protection. Every president since Nixon has revealed income tax returns, and Goldsmith thinks a law should bed passed requiring it. Basic free speech rights make it impossible to prevent a president, or anybody else, from telling lies constantly, but the author points out that future presidents will now have to reestablish confidence in presidential honestly and credibility. Trump's continued involvement in his businesses, despite the constitutional emoluments clause, Goldsmith would remedy by making it a strong federal offense, punishable  criminal prosecution for any future president to continue doing business in a way which brings personal profit while president. Goldsmith enumerates all the many ways in which Trump has violated [residential "norms", which he defines as accepted and expected presidential behavior and practices which are not required by law, and he offers remedies to ensure that future presidents do not violate them in the brazen, shameless manner that Trump has. The president of the United States has such enormous power, and such great responsibility to the American people and to the world, that to expect an and all presidents to behave within certain reasonable constraints is not only valid, but absolutely necessary. We call these "norms", and Mr. Goldsmith warns us that the president after Trump will face the daunting challenge of restoring norms to the oval office. and the executive branch.