David Frum

Congress is supposed to vote on these things.

There's no figment or tissue of any kind of authority that the president has to initiate this kind of major regime change conflict that he has in mind with Iran.

without the approval of Congress.

So what we're going to see is a drama of the tension between a president who wants personal power and a constitutional system that is designed to deny the president personal power.

That is why I think these alternative tariff regimens that are being discussed by the administration are ultimately going to collapse and may well be rejected by the courts.

Because the alternative forms of presidential tariff power all require a lot of process, all require a lot of explanations, all have rules.

They have preconditions that must be met, time limits that must be met.

There are opportunities to, they must be taken, some of them must go to court where there are opportunities for the tariffed party to make itself heard and to say, I did not engage in the unfair trade practice alleged by the president.

And under this trade power, Section 301 as it's known, you don't just take the president's word for it.

There is a process and a hearing.

And the accused party gets to make itself heard.

So we are going to see a drama of the individual will meeting institutional limits.

And that may be the theme of the rest of this political year and the rest of the Trump presidency.

The Trump drive to individual unchecked power has met some rebuffs.

But with war on the offing, he may have his greatest opportunity yet to remake the United States as the kind of one-man system that he wants it to be.

And now, my dialogue with Tim Miller.

But first, a quick break.

Tim Miller is known to all, or should by now be known to all, as the star host of the Bulwark's Daily Podcast.

He is also the author of the 2022 New York Times bestseller, Why We Did It, A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell.

Tim is a veteran of Republican presidential campaigns, McCain 08, Huntsman 2012, Jeb Bush 2016.