Yes, Donald Trump is going to face daunting challenges as president. But as William McGurn points out in the WSJ, “the curious politics of the moment has set him up for some bigly successes early on.” Curiously, it is his foes, not his supporters, who have put him in this “lucky position.”
Barack Obama, who vowed that he wouldn’t wait for Congress to act,, “has relied principally on executive authority to impose the Obama agenda.”
By relying on executive power instead of the hard work of persuading Congress to pass legislation, Mr. Obama has set Mr. Trump up for some wonderful photo-ops as the new president uses his own executive authority to undo large chunks of the Obama legacy.
John Kerry has made it easy for Trump to be a hero simply for “not insulting and demeaning the elected choice of the Israeli people the way Mr. Obama has.”
Put it this way: If you wanted to make Mr. Trump an instant hero to Israel, what would you do? The answer is you’d have America abstain from a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Jewish state—and then have the secretary of state give a speech like the one he just delivered knocking the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu as the “most right-wing in Israeli history.”
Sally Jewell “is apparently hard at work making it easier for Mr. Trump to show he’s making good on his promise.”
Throughout the election Mr. Trump made coal miners his special cause, promising to restore mining jobs killed by Obama-era regulations. Interior The vehicle is an 11th-hour rule that would give federal regulators more power to deny coal-mining permits.
Here’s the gift. The rule goes into effect a day before Mr. Trump is sworn in as president. That leaves 60 legislative days for Congress to stop it from going into effect under the Congressional Review Act.
Harry Reid pushed through a rule in the Senate that was “the most fundamental alteration of its rules in more than a generation,” according to the NYT.
Under the Reid rules, President Obama needed only a simple majority to get his nominees through, not the 60 votes to stop a GOP filibuster.
Plainly this made it easier for President Obama. But President Trump will enjoy the same advantage in a Congress where his party already has a majority in both houses.
Who needs luck when you have such helpful enemies?
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