The following article by Sam Berger and Alex Tausanovitch was posted on the Center for American Progress website July 30, 2018:
Preparing for Post-Trump Reforms
Many commentators have compared the Trump administration to the ill-fated presidency of Richard Nixon.1 The similarities are striking: a willingness to tap into the darker currents of the American political climate, a disregard for the rule of law, and an overriding concern with settling political scores and damaging perceived enemies. As special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continues, along with parallel investigations into other potentially illegal activity by President Donald Trump and his associates, it is already apparent that the Trump presidency will also be marred by scandal.2 Given these parallels, it is instructive to look at the reforms of the post-Watergate era when considering lessons for policymaking in a post-Trump world.
The post-Watergate reforms were far-reaching. They sought to restore faith in the U.S. political system by combating the corrupting influence of money in politics; promoting ethics and transparency in government; protecting people against abuses of government power; and limiting certain extraordinary exercises of presidential authority. Laws passed in that period have transformed, among other things, the federal budget process, government practices for protecting individuals’ personal information, and oversight of the intelligence community. While these reform efforts have not been uniformly successful, they reflect the resolve of the policymakers of that era, who had a broad understanding of the abuses that needed to be addressed and who were willing to take broad actions to address them.
This era of reform demonstrates at least two important lessons that apply to current efforts to prepare the post-Trump policy response. First, the post-Trump moment will likely present opportunities for significant reform across a broad range of policy areas, allowing policymakers to tackle deeply rooted problems that have previously proven difficult to address. Second, it is critical that policymakers begin planning now how to connect the wide-ranging scandals of the Trump administration to appropriate reforms.