Independence vs. democracy

Attorney General Todd Blanche went on the Sunday talk shows right after his confirmation and refused to pledge independence from President Donald Trump. This sounds corrupt to the media, but it makes sense to anyone who has read the Constitution. Blanche then assured America that Trump would never ask him to do anything inappropriate or corrupt. This is what a Trump appointee is expected to say, but it is laughable to anyone who knows Trump.These two moments, both from Blanche’s interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, highlight a problem at the root of our political dysfunction.We want our public officials to be independent and apolitical, but independent often means unaccountable. We want the rule of law to outrank the decisions of men, but the foundation of American law — the U.S. Constitution — puts all law enforcement power in the hands of one man. Finally, we want powers to be neatly separated and lines to be sharply drawn, but our fallen species can create only the imperfect City of Man, and not the perfectly just City of God. Attorney General Todd Blanche listens as President Donald Trump speaks at the David Mack Center for Training and Intelligence, Friday, Aug. 14, 2026, in Garden City, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson) Blanche, in brushing aside “independence,” was invoking the unitary executive understanding of the Constitution.This is a simple theory with clear textual grounding: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” It’s not vested in the President and the bureaucracy. It’s not vested in the Cabinet. Executive power is vested in the president.The Justice Department is part of the executive branch. Enforcing the law is clearly an executive function. DOJ’s priorities are set by political figures, which is good insofar as you like democracy.You could see the FBI and the attorney general, like a Treasury Department bureaucrat reviewing beer labels, as specialized appendages of the president.But at the same time, we do want some independence from the executive branch, and especially in the DOJ. We want our bureaucrats to use their expertise and follow the rules, rather than the whims of the president.We certainly don’t want our prosecutors and the FBI becoming the goon squad to harass, persecute, and prosecute the president’s enemies while protecting the president and his friends.And so when Blanche says he’d follow the president’s lead, he’s got good constitutional footing. But when Welker suggested this would include abusing prosecutorial and investigative powers, she was just as well-grounded.Trump directed his DOJ to go after all the prosecutors who went after Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). He sicced his DOJ on former President Barack Obama and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). In Trump’s first term, he fired his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for not stopping a counterintelligence investigation that implicated him.But while NBC News might not acknowledge this, the idea of an “independent attorney general” has not been a reality in a while. Obama called Attorney General Eric Holder his “wingman.” President John F. Kennedy’s attorney general was his brother.One defining trait of the Trump era is taking things to their logical conclusions: If former President Bill Clinton is fine, then moral character doesn’t matter. If a first-time senator is qualified, so is a reality TV host. If Attorneys General Holder and Kennedy are OK, then why should any of them pretend to have independence?Less cynically, since the Constitution grants executive power only to the president, logically, shouldn’t our FBI agents and prosecutors consider themselves appendages of the president, like some Treasury Department functionaries?But this is a mistake, because in human affairs, there are many things we ought not take to their logical consequences. Men can engineer suspension bridges and microchips with amazing precision, but those things are made with silicon and steel.Men cannot engineer human systems that work flawlessly. Out of the crooked timber of man, Immanuel Kant noted, no straight was ever made — not even by James Madison and George Washington.The Constitution makes Congress the superior branch — it is the boss of the executive — but gives the president full control over how to execute. It’s not hard to imagine how this could (and consider how it has) created contradictions. Such contradictions don’t undermine the Constitution, but they do undermine the notion that interpreting and applying it is easy.MAGAZINE: AOC’S LONELY ROADSo, yes, we want our attorneys general to be independent of politics but still subservient to the polity. And yes, we understand that this is strictly speaking impossible.That’s where norms and character enter the picture. When norms are ignored and character is in short supply, the crooked timber of mankind will produce particularly crooked results.