Paul Rosenzweig, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at DHS during the George W. Bush administration, believes that defeating President Donald Trump in this fall's presidential election is not enough.
Rather, he argues in a new piece for Lawfare, Congress must work to ensure future Trump-like presidents are unable to abuse their offices in the way that the current president has.
One proposed reform that Rosenzweig believes could pick up bipartisan support revolves around limiting the president's ability to evade the Senate confirmation process by using a rotating cast of "acting" cabinet officials.
"The law should be modified to make clear that no individual may be appointed to serve as acting head of an agency if his or her senatorial confirmation is for a position in a different agency," he writes. "Second, the law should deny salary funding to any appointee after a fixed period of time."
Rosenzweig also believes Congress could pass a law that would mandate presidential candidates release their tax information, and also more explicitly limit the president's ability to bypass Congress by making "emergency" declarations that are used to justify spending not approved by the legislative branch.
He also believes Congress must make it harder for presidents to fire inspectors general without cause, while also employing automatic penalties for Hatch Act violations.
And Rosenzweig proposes going so far as to amend the Constitution to prohibit the president from pardoning anyone whom he knows personally, which would have prevented Trump's commutation of ally Roger Stone's prison sentence.
"The idea that a president might pardon his own criminal confederates (as is arguably the case with Roger Stone) is exactly why George Mason opposed the pardon power altogether," he writes. "At some point, Congress might give serious consideration to a constitutional amendment that, for example, makes pardons illegal for individuals personally known to the president and makes the misuse of the power judicially reviewable."
