| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. I suppose as a political scientist I can't avoid the obvious topic: President Donald Trump's declaration of absolute power in his press conference Monday afternoon. "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total." (There was more, but that's the gist.) The episode began Monday morning when Trump tweeted out a "correction" to media reports that had accurately pointed out that state and local governments were the ones that had shut businesses down and told citizens to stay home during the pandemic, and that they were the entities that could open things back up. Trump was sure to be challenged on that assertion at his press briefing, and he was. It wasn't clear just how "total" he thinks his authority is. But he pretty explicitly claimed that federalism is nothing more than voluntary forbearance by the federal government and, by extension, by him personally as president. Trump, as virtually every political scientist and constitutional law professor immediately said, is absolutely wrong about all of that. But how he's wrong is slightly more complicated. The presidency scholar Richard Neustadt had the go-to quote about this some 60 years ago: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of "separated powers." It did nothing of the sort. Rather, it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers. That's often read as referring to Congress and the presidency, and perhaps the courts, but Neustadt was well aware that in practice the bureaucracy acts as a kind of fourth branch, shared and contested but also capable of fighting for itself. He surely also meant the overlapping powers of the federal, state and local governments. Even within the federal government, powers are very much shared. Presidents and the courts legislate. Congress and the courts execute the laws. Congress and the president do things that look very much like a judicial function. There is no last resort, no ultimate person or institution "in charge." That's how the government is designed, and in this respect it really does work as intended. Even when one institution appears to be more influential, it is usually only because the others have chosen to defer, and they retain the capacity to take back what powers they've ceded. Federalism isn't quite the same. In some areas, the constitution does give the national government supremacy. But even then, the system leans toward overlapping powers. So when the Supreme Court decided on marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision was binding on the states. But the states have taken the lead on decriminalizing marijuana despite the federal government's opposition (not to mention far more dramatic cases throughout history, such as the outright defiance of the Civil War amendments by Jim Crow states). All of which suggests that even clear examples of federal supremacy are always contested, and even when they appear to be cut and dried that's usually the outcome of a political battle rather than a simple federal edict. Very few powers aren't shared. For the president, there's mainly the power of the pardon. Everything else is either explicitly ("by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate") or in practice a joint power. Even the president's power as commander in chief is shared: Congress has the responsibility "to raise and support Armies," to "provide and maintain a Navy" and to "make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." The flip side of this design is that presidents can do an awful lot as long as they convince other relevant parties that they have a right to, since no one else — not Congress, the states or the courts — has total authority either. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a "bank holiday" in 1933 on dubious legal grounds, but it worked because it was needed to save the economic system, he got congressional authorization, he explained what he was doing clearly, and he knew what presidential power was and how to wield it. He didn't proclaim that he had "total authority" when he stretched statutory and constitutional boundaries. Instead, he gathered information, planned carefully, bargained with those who might've opposed him, built coalitions and shared credit. All foreign to the current president. So I'm not going to tell you that Trump is wrong because the federal government doesn't have the constitutional or statutory power to do certain things. All of that is ultimately contested. Trump is wrong because absolute power of any kind is anathema to the constitutional design, and he's wrong because he's an inept president who in practice has far less influence than most. Could, theoretically, a president do what Trump is claiming as a right? Yes. Even Trump has had some influence over governors and local officials and will continue to have some influence over them. But total authority? No, that's not part of the government of the United States. No one has that. 1. Missed this one over the weekend, but still good: Brian Arbour on Senator Bernie Sanders and older voters. 2. Dan Drezner on the pandemic and international relations. 3. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas on the Trump administration's continuing personnel chaos. 4. Marc Lipsitch on coronavirus immunity. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Cathy O'Neil on the pandemic statistics. 6. Annie Lowrey on another economic setback for millennials. 7. And a very good item from Paul Waldman on why Trump's refusal to give bad news is counterproductive for him and for the nation. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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