The president — whether Obama or Trump — is not the king

Congressional Democrats and pundits on the left are expressing alarm at what Donald Trump will do with executive orders after he becomes president on Jan. 20. They fear that Trump will bypass Congress to make far-reaching decisions on subjects such as immigration, trade, foreign policy and health care.

The problem is these critics have no credibility after eight years of looking the other way when President Barack Obama took the same approach. It’s well-known that Obama issued sweeping rules on immigration and pollution, triggering lawsuits from states alleging presidential overreach. But what’s less appreciated is that his administration also effectively rewrote the two biggest domestic policy initiatives to come out of Congress this century: the No Child Left Behind education reform measure enacted in 2002 and the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010. In both cases, certain mandates approved by lawmakers were simply disregarded.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has consistently opposed executive overreach under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. This is why we hope that Democrats who believe that Trump has gone beyond constitutional limits on executive power should follow the lead of Republicans who sued Obama over similar concerns — even if it gets them labeled as hypocrites.

The president is not the king, as Obama himself once told Univision, and the president should not usurp the authority of the legislative or judicial branches. That view should not depend on what you think about the person in the Oval Office.

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