Debacle

Like many others, I wondered about what form the Trump Administration would take. It now looks like it will be just like his campaign. He and a few close associates will make all the decisions. That may be OK for a campaign. Doing whatever you want irrespective of the laws and ignoring the consequences is not how a democracy is supposed to work. The debacle he has created with his executive order on immigration shows that his approach is a disaster.
Whether or not his order is good policy can certainly be debated. There can be no debate that he went at it all wrong. The administration should have taken time to develop a carefully thought out strategy, worked with the Justice Department to make sure it was legal, work with homeland security on its implementation and State to deal with any foreign reaction. Given that it went into effect a week after his inauguration, it is obvious that he took none of these steps.
Now they have a real mess on their hands. On multiple occasions they have had to restate their policy. They are getting widespread criticism, including from Republicans and lawsuits and court rulings are piling up. Just today we have seen the acting Attorney General fired. True to form, he ignored the chain of command in picking a successor. All of this is totally a self-inflicted wound.
In 1774 John Adams talked of a “country of laws and not of men”. It’s time for Donald Trump to realize that. Otherwise, it’s going to be a very long four years.
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