Obligation, not optics: Trump must use his veto power

On July 27, Congress sent to President Trump a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, North Korea, and Iran. In addition to these sanctions, the bill also limited the president’s power to waive such sanctions unilaterally. On August 2, President Trump signed the legislation — reluctantly.

We know of his reluctance in part because he said as much, doing so in two documents accompanying the new law. Such documents are known as signing statements.

The Constitution requires the president to state his reasons for vetoing a piece of legislation. Article I declares that if the chief executive “shall return” a bill instead of signing it, he must do so “with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated.”

{mosads}The Constitution says nothing about a presidential statement upon signing a bill into law. However, presidents now commonly do accompany their signature with some comment regarding the new statute. Often, doing so amounts to little more than a press release, parlaying talking points about the good the new law will do and how that good fits within the broader goals of the administration. At other times, signing statements seek to explain the executive branch’s understanding of the bill and thus how that branch will seek to enforce the statute.

But in this case, President Trump’s signing statements included another element — objections. The president declared that the bill “included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions.” In President Trump’s view, these provisions presented violations of the executive’s power to recognize foreign governments, set up a system that contravened the constitutionally mandated process for passing legislation, and sought to subordinate executive officers to Congress, not the president, in foreign affairs.

Yet the president signed the legislation into law nonetheless. Doing so under those circumstances presents a serious problem. For whether or not the new law violates the Constitution, President Trump’s belief that they do coupled with his approval of the legislation involved a serious dereliction of his duty under the Constitution.

We can see this dereliction by examining the constitutionally mandated oath that the president-elect must recite upon assuming his office. In that well-known oath, the president-elect must promise that he “will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Thus, the president swears that he will use all means at his disposal in service to the U.S. Constitution. That document then grants him numerous means to fulfill that promise. The president’s constitutionally granted means for such protection include his ability to veto legislation that contravenes or otherwise undermines it.

While presidents often use the veto to negate bills they think bad policy, those considerations pale in comparison to whether or not a proposed law violates our fundamental charter.   

President Trump, by his own admission, did not fulfill this obligation. But he is not the first to both avoid his duty and to use signing statements to admit it.

In 2002, President George W. Bush expressed reservations about the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002,” (also known as McCain-Feingold after its chief authors in the Senate). While supportive of its overall intent — to curb the power and influence of moneyed interests — the president warned that “the bill does have flaws.” These flaws went beyond disagreements over policy, instead extending into “serious constitutional concerns,” involving violations of First Amendment protections for free speech. Yet President Bush expressed these reservations in his signing statement, not in a veto message.

Like President Trump, President Bush also signed into law a bill he publicly admitted he thought unconstitutional. Like President Trump, in that act President Bush failed to fulfill his constitutional oath of office.

It is true that the new sanctions passed Congress by overwhelming margins. More than likely, the legislative branch would have overridden President Trump’s veto. Furthermore, given the ongoing investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election, such a veto could look bad. But neither of these possibilities ever should stop a president from faithfulness to his oath. How Congress interprets its constitutional duty must not stop the president from using all means to fulfill his own. How bad the optics of an action might look cannot halt a president from preserving and defending the Constitution to the best of his ability.

During his campaign, President Trump justly extolled the rule of law — the essential concept that we are a “government of laws, not of men.” He rightly lambasted our government’s pervasive violation of that principle in recent times. Now is the time for him to act on his words. A restoration of the rule of law begins with preserving its highest form – our Constitution.

Adam Carrington is an assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.