Constitution Day

On September 19th, 2017, I went to the Constitution Day celebration to hear Julian E. Zelizer, CNN Political analysis and political author. The main focus of his discussion was the state of the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump, and how the disapproval and controversy of the current office compares to other offices of presidents past.

First, Zelizer touched on the current issues surrounding the presidency, such as Russia’s involvement with the election, the boundaries of Freedom, and controversial executive orders, such as nuclear deals with Iran and the Refugee camp. I appreciated that the speaker first addressed the current issues of the political climate, so that we had a solid base of knowledge to build off of and compare the rest of the talk and the past presidencies to.

Zelizer then continued to talk of the Trump administration in correlation of past administrations. He focused mostly on the FDR and LBJ administrations. Both of these presidents, were similar to the Trump administration in a particular way. They attacked and disapproved of others in their own party. Zelizer focused on the power that Congress has to stop and control the presidency. Trump has a unique rhetoric that Zelizer predicted could be his own undoing. He addressed that if Trump uses his aggressive rhetoric unduly, he could box himself into a corner, just as LBJ did with the Vietnam war and G.W. Bush did with the Iraqi and Afghan Wars. Also addressed is the topic of Impeachment. Zelizer stressed that this is used only as a last resort by Congress, and is only used if Trump would try to do something incredibly drastic, or if Trump would excessively abuse his power.

Zelizer finished the talk with ways that Congress is already fighting back for what is right, publicly speaking out against Trump and some even going against the party majority to vote for their personal beliefs instead of the beliefs of the party they belong to.

I really liked this event, and came out of it feeling like I had a better understanding of the current political climate. I really liked how Zelizer compared the current Presidency to ones that have passed and gave a nuanced and comparative opinion of the current state of American Politics instead of shoehorning in his personal opinions. I was a tad disappointed though, in the lack of Constitutional reference in the talk. As the talk was for Constitution Day itself, I feel that more emphasis should have been focused on the actual constitutional repercussions of the Trump administration, in lieu of historical comparison. That said, I really enjoyed this talk, and appreciate the politically engaging activities on campus.