It’s National School Choice Week, so it’s a good time to survey the countryside and see what’s in store for the year ahead. Last year was relatively quiet in terms of school choice legislation. South Dakota enacted a relatively limited tax-credit scholarship program and Maryland enacted a small voucher program, but there wasn’t much progress otherwise. By contrast, 2015 was the Year of Educational Choice. Not only did 15 states adopt 21 new or expanded educational choice programs, three of them enacted education savings account (ESA) laws. As I’ve noted previously, ESAs represent a move from school choice to educational choice because families can use ESA funds to pay for a lot more than just private school tuition. Parents can use the ESA funds for tutors, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online classes, educational therapy, and more. They can also save unused funds for future educational expenses, including college. Already, several states this year are considering ESA legislation. Last week, legislators in Arkansas introduced a universal-eligibility, tax-credit funded ESA similar to what Jonathan Butcher and I described in our report last year, “Taking Credit for Education.” Donors would receive tax credits for contributions to nonprofit scholarship organizations that would fund the ESAs. According to a just-released study from Julie Trivitt and Corey DeAngelis of the University of Arkansas, if enacted, the ESA would expand educational choice while saving taxpayers an estimated $2.8 million. This week, the Missouri Senate Education Committee will hold a hearing on a bill to create tax-credit funded ESA, similar to the Arkansas bill described above. Missouri will also consider publicly funded ESAs, as well as other choice proposals. Other states considering publicly funded ESAs include Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Texas. I’ve also heard that Arizona legislators are considering expanding their ESA, possibly to include all Arizona students. Meanwhile, in Nevada, Gov. Sandoval is looking to find ways to fund his state’s ESA after the state supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the program but struck down its funding mechanism. Several states will also be considering tax-credit scholarship programs, including Kentucky, Nebraska, and (likely) Texas. In addition, South Carolina is looking to expand its tax credit. I’m liking missing a number of proposals, and it will be tough to top 2015, but 2017 very well might be the Year of Educational Choice, Jr.

Earlier today, demonstrating his preference for action over reason, President Trump signed an executive order to officially withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to witness the rare act of a politician fulfilling a campaign pledge. On the other hand, there is nothing else good about it. Trump detonated a bomb; six years of negotiations went boom; now what?

To a president who seems intent on turning the country inward, raising the barricades, demanding self-sufficiency, and eschewing the outside world, the TPP was an obvious target. But what’s especially disconcerting is that the president didn’t need to go this far to keep TPP out of play. The agreement couldn’t possibly take effect without congressional passage of implementing legislation, and his signature affixed. He could have just kept TPP on the back-burner in the event that its utility, relevance, or imperative to U.S. economic and geostrategic objectives became evident, as his term progressed. Because it will.

My colleagues and I did a thorough, chapter-by-chapter assessment of the TPP and concluded that, on net, implementation would advance our economic freedoms. But there is also a geostrategic rationale for the TPP that compels beyond the text of the agreement. I presented that case in a few different articles, but here’s an excerpt from the most recent oped, in The Hill: 

The TPP is a comprehensive trade and investment agreement that reduces tariffs and other trade barriers among 12 Pacific-Rim nations. Implementation would help generate greater wealth and higher living standards by more closely integrating economies that account for 40 percent of global GDP.

As an agreement among countries on four continents, the TPP is uniquely qualified to fill the void created by the once successful, but now dysfunctional, multilateral negotiating “round” approach to global trade liberalization.

But perhaps more significantly, the TPP offers a unique opportunity to refresh the U.S.-created rules and institutions of international trade and adapt them to the nature and conditions of the 21st century global economy. It is a blueprint for securing U.S. geoeconomic and geopolitical interests now and into the future.

Without the TPP, as the economic center of gravity continues its shift across the Pacific toward Asia, those successful trade rules and institutions could become superseded by lesser, opaque, discriminatory rules, which subvert the existing order, advance parochial objectives, and disadvantage U.S. commercial interests.

The geostrategic rationale for TPP—which has yet to dawn on the president-elect—is much less about achieving overt economic and security objectives than it is about preserving and strengthening U.S. soft power.

Unlike most other trade agreements, the TPP permits new members to join. The fact that TPP has achieved critical mass allows its terms to be offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Just as larger bodies floating in space have significant gravitational pull on smaller, surrounding objects, the TPP—by virtue of its heft—would pull other countries on other continents into its orbit because the costs of remaining on the outside will increase with each new accession.

The evidence of this effect is considerable. As investment in production platforms and supply chains has begun to shift from TPP outsiders to TPP members, current non-members such as South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Taiwan have been considering and implementing various domestic reforms to improve their prospects for eventually joining.

With TPP rules and benefits applying to China’s most important trade partners, Beijing would have no better alternatives than to embrace the TPP itself, which would be good for all TPP parties.

In addition, what better way to dissuade China from bellicosity over its territorial disputes with Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines than to demonstrate a prosperous alternative to 1930’s‑style resource-driven expansionism in Asia?

Rather than deploy a naval fleet, offer China’s neighbors—and China itself—a clearly plausible path to economic growth and security.

But without TPP, China is the large mass drawing smaller countries into its gravitational pull. With the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiations waiting in the wings for TPP’s failure, countries in the region will be drawn more deeply into China’s orbit.

That shift doesn’t mean trade between the United States and those countries will suddenly dry up, but it does mean that existing China-focused investment and supply chain relationships will be reinforced, new ones will emerge and become established, and the costs of reorienting those relationships in the event of some future TPP implementation will increase with each passing year.

U.S. commercial and diplomatic interests in the region would be further impaired by Washington’s failure to follow through on its promises. Reformers in foreign governments that incurred political costs to push the TPP in their countries with expectations of U.S. participation wouldn’t soon forget that the United States proved to be an unreliable partner.

Hopes for the TPP jump-starting a new wave of global trade liberalization would be dashed and, with U.S. credibility diminished around the world, America’s policy objectives would become more difficult to meet.

Perhaps the highest legislative priority for House Republicans in the 115th Session of Congress is an overhaul of the United States’ antiquated and onerous corporate tax code. The details of the GOP plan aren’t out yet—it’s only summarized in a House Republican “blueprint” and the legislative text hasn’t been finalized—but the general idea is to replace the current 35% “worldwide” corporate income tax with a 20–25% “destination-based” tax on corporations’ US sales (i.e., including domestic sales of imports in the tax base, but excluding export sales—so called “border tax adjustments”).

This “destination-based cash-flow tax” (or “#DBCFT” as the tax nerds are now calling it on the interwebs) would be a fundamental shift in how (and on what) American corporations now pay tax, and it raises complex economic issues—including how trade would be affected—that I wouldn’t dare try to navigate here (but these analyses are a good start). 

On the other hand, the DBCFT debate also has addressed whether the tax plan would be consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on “border adjustable” taxes, with some folks already going so far as to claim that any version of the DBCFT would violate the United States’ international obligations and thus expose US exports to billions of dollars-worth of WTO-sanctioned retaliation. As I discuss below, however, that assumption’s not really correct; in fact, there is a very good argument that the DBCFT, if properly constructed, would pass muster at the WTO and thereby avoid potential retaliatory tariffs on US exports.

Before we get to that analysis, however, three very important notes:

• First, the Republican plan is not a tariff or other border measure that applies only to imports; it is an “internal tax” that applies to both imports and domestically-produced goods and services. (Think of it like a sales tax, which is paid on a good or service consumed in the United States, regardless of its origin.) This has two important implications: 1) the tax is not the same as, for example, a steep “border tax” on imports into the United States from US companies that engage in “outsourcing” (though many have speculated that the Republican tax proposal could serve as a final compromise between Congress and President Trump on the issue of “outsourcing” and border taxes); and 2) the tax plan is therefore not inherently “protectionist” (though it may have important distributional effects, depending on things like currency movements—see economic links above).
• Second, and relatedly, WTO rules are primarily concerned with preventing discrimination in a Member’s domestic market—in favor of certain WTO Members’ goods and services (the “most favored nation” principle) or domestic industry (the “national treatment” principle or rules prohibiting certain subsidies). Thus, a WTO Member is relatively free to apply many types of measures, such as the DBCFT, that could have significant effects on trade flows or domestic investment but might not actually violate those WTO rules. And, whether other WTO Members reciprocate with similar taxes on US-origin goods and services is immaterial to any ultimate conclusions of the DBCFT’s WTO-consistency (though it may have a practical effect). These distinctions might sound wonky (and they are), but they’re important: while most of the trade-related focus on the DBCFT has been on the taxation of imports and rebate or exemption for exports or on whether other WTO Members apply similar taxes to American products, the WTO focus is, as you’ll see below, instead on two things: 1) whether the tax itself discriminates against imports in favor of identical domestic goods in the US market or 2) whether the “border adjustment” on exports is an impermissible export subsidy. Thus, the DBCFT’s consistency with WTO rules is important in terms of international trade relations, but it does not necessarily mean the DBCFT is good economic policy.
• Finally, just because something looks WTO-inconsistent doesn’t actually mean that it is (or that a WTO Member will challenge it). All WTO Members’ laws are considered to be consistent with WTO rules until found otherwise in official dispute settlement. Many Members therefore adopt policies that could be problematic under WTO rules, particularly when they think that the policies won’t be challenged, or political or economic considerations are more important that WTO ones. The threat of WTO retaliation and the appearance of being a responsible WTO Member are important variables, but they’re certainly not the only (or even predominant) ones.

So with those three things out of the way, let’s get on with the analysis. In general, a border adjustable internal tax will likely be consistent with WTO rules where—

1) The tax itself is among the types for which border adjustments are permitted. Under the WTOSubsidies Agreement, “direct taxes” (like a corporate income tax) are ineligible for border adjustment, and any such adjustment on export sales would constitute a prohibited export subsidy. This rule was put to the test in the late 90s when the United States lost a series of WTO disputes over its corporate income tax exemptions for “foreign sales corporations” (FSC/ETI): WTO panels and the Appellate Body found that the US corporate income tax was a “direct tax,” that the FSC/ETI tax breaks were “subsidies” to the recipient US firms, and that such tax breaks were contingent upon exportation—precisely the type of prohibited border tax adjustment subsidy listed in the Subsidies Agreement’s “Illustrative List” of prohibited subsidies.

On the other hand, the same WTO subsidy rules permit border adjustments on “indirect taxes” like value-added taxes (VATs), including the one applied by the EU. As a result, the conventional wisdom holds that only traditional consumption taxes (e.g., sales taxes or “credit-invoice” VATs that are paid by consumers and applied directly on products) are eligible for border adjustment under WTO rules. Those taxes certainly are eligible, but other taxes might also qualify. Most importantly, the definitions of “direct tax” and “indirect tax” in the WTO Subsidies Agreement leave possible gray areas for corporate taxes that share characteristics of both forms of taxation. This could include a “subtraction-method VAT,” under which a uniform rate of tax is levied directly on corporate sellers (as opposed to products/​consumers) based on their sales revenue, less taxable (domestic) purchases. Such a system is widely accepted as VAT (thus fitting the Subsidies Agreement’s definition of “indirect tax”), but it is also a tax on a form of corporate income (thus potentially meeting the “direct tax” definition). This ambiguity could protect a border adjustable, subtraction-method VAT from the relatively straightforward analysis that applied to the FSC/ETI measures. Indeed, Japan has imposed a border adjustable, subtraction-method VAT since the early 1990s, without any serious interest or concern from other WTO Members—a decent indication that the system doesn’t raise the same WTO alarm bells as FSC/ETI did. (Other WTO Members, of course, might disagree.)

2) The tax imposes identical burdens on imported goods and domestically produced “like” products. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) generally prohibits taxes on imports other than duties, but Article II:2(a) allows a government to impose at the time a product crosses its border “a charge equivalent to an internal tax imposed…on a like domestic product,” as long as it is imposed consistently with the “national treatment” principle of GATT Article III. Thus, an internal tax at the border would be consistent with GATT Article II (on tariffs and import charges) and Article III (National Treatment) the imported good at issue is “not subject, directly or indirectly to internal taxes or other internal charges of any kind in excess of those applied directly or indirectly to like domestic products.”

3) The border adjustment on exports is no greater than the actual amount of tax collected or due. Under WTO rules, the rebate or exemption of eligible taxes (such as VAT) on exports will not be treated as an export subsidy, as long as the rebate/​exemption rate is not greater than the rate at which the tax is levied domestically. On the other hand, such a rebate/​exemption will constitute a prohibited export subsidy where it is in excess of the actual tax collected or due.

Based on these general rules, the DBCFT could, depending on its design, arguably pass muster at the WTO. First, in order for the tax exemption or rebate on US exports to avoid being designated a prohibited export subsidy, the adjusted corporate tax must not be a “direct tax,” as defined in the WTO Subsidies Agreement. The Republican proposal might pass this test if it is, for example, a subtraction method VAT. Second, the DBCFT must also be levied on imported products at a rate or amount no higher than the rate/​amount levied on domestically produced “like” products (to be consistent with GATT Articles II and III). Third, the DBCFT cannot provide a border adjustment on export that is greater than the amount of tax actually levied or due (to avoid being a prohibited export subsidy).

All of these tests would require far more detail than we have at this stage, but the second issue may be the most problematic for the DBCFT. Various commenters have indicated that the DBCFT will permit certain additional deductions (e.g., for domestic wages and salaries) from the tax base, thus leading to a lower effective tax rate on domestic products than on the exact same imports. If that is, in fact, the case, then the DBCFT probably discriminates against imports in violation of GATT rules. We can test this once the legislative text is released through a simple hypothetical assessment of the tax’s effect on two identical U.S. companies selling and exporting the same product, with one company selling only imported final goods and the other selling identical products with 100% US content. If the total DBCFT paid by the former company is more than that paid by the latter (accounting for the whole value chain), then the tax measure would likely discriminate against imported goods in violation of GATT Articles II and III. f the total export border adjustment provided to one of the companies is more than the tax collected (or otherwise due), then the system would likely be a prohibited export subsidy.

Obviously, the devil will be in the details. At this stage, I’m pretty agnostic about the DBCFT, but that certainly could change depending on the text of the final proposal and analyses of its projected economic (trade, budget, etc.) effects. In the meantime, however, we can dispense with the conventional wisdom that the DBCFT is definitely “protectionist” or that it definitely violates the United States’ WTO obligations. WTO-consistency, of course, doesn’t necessarily make the DBCFT good policy overall, but at least it would let us avoid a mess at the WTO and potential retaliation from our trading partners.

The views expressed herein are those of Scott Lincicome alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employers.

Donald Trump, in his inaugural address today: “The oath I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.” A harmless rhetorical flourish, no doubt, and one that Trump is by no means the first to make. And yet…

Note that the President’s actual oath of office says nothing about allegiance. It instead contains verbs promising two types of action: “faithfully execute the Office” and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Its exact text reads: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

If a President does those two things, the American people as a whole will benefit. So no big difference from what Trump said, right? Maybe. 

The words of the actual oath require the President first to uphold legality, even above his vision of what might be good for the people. This element of legal constraint is lost if a President sees his allegiance as being to someone rather than something. As colleague Tim Lynch wrote on Wednesday, “There are many other checks and balances in our system, but the oath of office is supposed to be the first line of defense.”

Now history may look back and see this as an unimportant choice of words. Trump’s actions one way or the other will speak louder than his shades of wording.

Still, I wish the speech had used the word “Constitution,” or “law” in a way beyond the phrase “law enforcement,” or “Framers” or “Founders,” or “Declaration” or “Amendment” or “individual” or perhaps “rights.” The one occurrence of “right” was in a passage about “the right of all nations to put their interests first.”

During his campaign, Trump’s style was noteworthy for how seldom he mentioned the Constitution, the legal limits of government power, or the rights of the individual. Let us hope that these themes emerge in future speeches by the new President.

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, where will President Trump turn when his “America First” policies lay waste to the very people he professes to be helping?

The ideas conjured by “Buy American” may appeal to many of President Trump’s supporters, but the phrase is merely a euphemism for doling political spoils, featherbedding, and protectionism. The president may score points with union bosses, import-competing producers, and some workers, but at great expense to taxpayers, workers and businesses more broadly.

Cordoning off the estimated $1.7 trillion U.S. government procurement market to U.S. suppliers would mean higher price tags, fewer projects funded, and fewer people hired. In today’s globalized economy, where supply chains are transnational and direct investment crosses borders, finding products that meet the U.S.-made definition is no easy task, as many consist of components made in multiple countries. And by precluding foreign suppliers from bidding, any short-term increases in U.S. economic activity and jobs likely would be offset by lost export sales – and the jobs that go with them – on account of copycat protectionism abroad.

Buy American laws have been used to limit competition for government procurement to domestic firms and workers since 1933. General Buy American restrictions already apply to all government procurement of supplies and materials for use within the United States. Those provisions require that all “unmanufactured” products (essentially, raw materials) procured be mined or produced in the United States and that all “manufactured” articles procured fit the definition of a “domestic end product,” which is an article manufactured in the United States from components, which are at least 50 percent (by value) U.S.-produced.

Those Buy American restrictions can be waived if any one of three conditions applies: (1) a waiver would be in the public interest; (2) the products are not available from domestic sources in sufficient quantity or of satisfactory quality, or; (3) the cost of using US-made products is deemed “unreasonable.” Under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, “unreasonable cost” is defined as a situation where foreign supplies and materials are offered at a price that is six percent or more below the price of domestic supplies and materials.

But there are even more restrictive Buy American provisions governing Transportation Department procurement rules for highway and related projects. These rules require that all of the iron, steel, and manufactured products used in these projects be produced in the United States. The definition of U.S.-manufactured products is the same here as under the general Buy American provision, and the same thresholds for public interest and short supply waivers also apply. However, the unreasonable cost waiver is considerably different. Under this provision waiving the restriction on the basis of unreasonable cost requires that the total project cost (not the input cost) be at least 25 percent higher. That is an enormous cushion for domestic suppliers, which accords them license to tender their bids at exorbitant prices.

There is another set of waivers that are supposed to ensure some competition in the U.S. government procurement market. Under the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, the president is authorized to invoke the public interest waiver of the Buy American rules and exempt countries which reciprocally waive their own buy-local restrictions for U.S. firms. Those countries include signatories to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement or parties to U.S. free trade agreements (like the North American Free Trade Agreement) that contain full government procurement chapters.

Whether these waivers would be invoked by President Trump seems highly unlikely – it would at least contradict his inaugural rhetoric. Moreover, Senator Sherrod Brown (D‑OH) plans to introduce new legislation next week to broaden the scope (and limit the potential for exemptions) of government spending that is subject to Buy American rules, to effectively ensure that the $1 trillion or more of infrastructure spending likely to be authorized by Congress is off limits to foreign companies and workers.

With low-cost suppliers of crucial materials and some of the world’s most experienced and efficient civil engineering firms (think dredging America’s too shallow harbors to accommodate the large Post-Panamax container ships) effectively excluded from the infrastructure spending bonanza, U.S. suppliers will be less restrained in their cost proposals, which means fewer, more expensive public projects.

As individuals spending their own money, most Americans seek to maximize value. That often means shopping for groceries at a big supermarket chain instead of the gourmet market or patronizing Home Depot instead of the hardware store on Main Street. Shouldn’t we expect Washington to spend our tax dollars with a similar eye toward prudence and value?

The instinct to want to insulate “our” markets, protect “our” businesses, and prevent “our” resources from leaking into other jurisdictions at “our” expense is easy to grasp. But the idea that restricting government procurement spending to American goods, services, and workers will produce that outcome is misguided, nonetheless.

When we artificially reduce the pool of qualified suppliers or the variety of eligible supplies that can satisfy procurement requirements, projects cost more, take longer to complete, and suffer from lower quality. Only a basic understanding of supply and demand is required to see that limiting competition for procurement projects ensures one outcome: taxpayers get a smaller bang for their buck.

Sure, some U.S. companies will win bids, hire new workers, and generate local economic activity. What will be less visible — but every bit as real — are the contracts denied numerous other U.S. businesses and workers because the resources have been stretched and depleted to satisfy restrictive procurement rules. Some U.S. companies and some U.S. workers may benefit, but the real value of public spending — the actual products and services procured — will decline.

While President Trump seems to be prioritizing U.S. companies and workers, he must know that well over 6 million Americans work for foreign-headquartered companies here in the United States. He must know that over $1.2 trillion of foreign direct investment is parked in the U.S. manufacturing, undergirding valued added activity, and supporting jobs and the tax base. Tightening Buy American rules will hurt these firms and possibly chase them and their investments offshore.

It is the responsibility of elected officials who tax, borrow, and spend to be prudent stewards of the public’s finances. Yet the temptation to breach that implicit contract to advance self-serving ends often proves irresistible – especially when the action finds refuge in patriotism.

“The magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me… could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”

—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

“He referred to my hands—‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

—Donald Trump, Republican primary debate, March 3, 2016

Unless he manages to fire off a tweet in between taking the oath and approaching the podium, today’s Inaugural Address will be the first time Donald J. Trump addresses the public as president. We’re told it’s going to be a “philosophical document”; what that will mean we’ll have to wait to find out, but I’ll hazard one guess about the contents of the speech. Early Inaugural Addresses nearly always included a profession of humility by the man about to assume such grave responsibilities, as with Washington, above, or Jefferson (“the task is above my talents”); Madison (“my own inadequacy to its high duties”); Monroe (“conscious of my own deficiency”); and even Andrew Jackson (“a diffidence, perhaps too just, in my own qualifications…”). I doubt that Trump’s Inaugural Address will contain anything like that.

Presidents don’t talk like they used to, and they haven’t for some time. Most presidential scholars recognize “a significant transformation of the presidency at the turn of the twentieth century from a traditional, administrative, and unrhetorical office into a modern, expansive, and stridently rhetorical one in which incumbents routinely speak over the head of Congress and to the public to lead and to govern.” In a 2002 article, presidential scholar Elvin T. Lim exhaustively examined all Inaugural and State of the Union addresses from 1789 to 2000, and found—it will hardly shock you to learn—that presidential rhetoric has become “more anti-intellectual,” more imperial, “more assertive,” and characterized by “an increasing lack of humility.”

Trump won’t be the first president to simultaneously dumb down the content and ramp up the hubris, but it appears likely that, as president, he’ll take the prevailing rhetorical trends to a new level, offering the Xtreme Energy Drink version of what’s usually on tap.

Hard as it may be to picture now, in the early years of the Republic, the prevailing norm was that the president was mostly supposed to keep his mouth shut. The Founding Generation didn’t believe in Teddy Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit: the very idea of a president claiming a special mandate to speak for the people, pounding the podium and rallying the masses behind his agenda was anathema to them.

In his pioneering study The Rhetorical Presidency, Jeffrey Tulis observed that “the founders worried especially about the danger that a powerful executive might pose to the system if [presidential] power were derived from the role of popular leader. For most federalists, ‘demagogue’ and ‘popular leader’ were synonyms, and nearly all references to popular leaders in their writings are pejorative.” In fact, that fear bookends the Federalist, with the first essay warning that of “men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants,” and the last raising the specter of “the military despotism of a victorious demagogue.”

Instead of translating popular passions into government activism, the president’s role was to resist those passions, to, as Federalist 71 puts it, “withstand the temporary delusion in order to give [the people] time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.”

Accordingly, a web of tacit norms—what Tulis calls a “rhetorical common law”—constrained the president’s ability to engage in popular appeals. They weren’t supposed to address the public very frequently. As Tulis notes, Washington’s first Inaugural is addressed to “Fellow Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives”—not the public at large; and 19th-century presidents gave very few public speeches in general.

Those norms also governed what presidents were supposed to say when they did address the public. “Every president in the nineteenth century, except Zachary Taylor, mentioned the Constitution” in his Inaugural Address, Tulis observes, and most elaborated with “reflection upon its meaning.” Lim tracks a 20th-century decline in references to the Constitution, and finds that “other keywords of typical republican rhetoric have become unpopular, with references to the once honored words like republic, citizen, character, duty, and virtuous falling significantly. … In contrast, references to leader, people, and democracy have increased dramatically over time.” Moreover, “as modern presidents have rhetorically represented themselves increasingly as protectors and defenders of the people, their rhetoric has also tended to aggrandize their status within the governmental system.” Where once presidents humbly sought the blessings of “Providence,” in their formal addresses, lately they’re more likely to invoke “God,” suggesting He’s on our side, after all.

We’ve come a long way, baby: and, as president, Donald Trump seems likely to take us even further from the “rhetorical common law” that once restrained presidential demagoguery and, with it, presidential power.

Where Obama indulged in the occasional feel-good, “rock-star” rally as president, Trump has signaled that he may make the mass rally a regular feature of his presidency. And where Obama, our first Twitter president, had a feed so reassuringly dull, you could safely unfollow it without fearing you’d miss anything, you could hardly say the same about @realDonaldTrump. As a medium of direct address, Twitter is ill-suited to encourage the “cool and sedate reflection” the presidency demands, and which Trump seems constitutionally incapable of providing. Just since his election, Trump has used it to rail against bad restaurant reviews, Saturday Night Live skits, and the United States’ nuclear-armed rivals.

Rhetorically, Trump represents the antithesis of the modest, restrained vision of the presidency shared by most of the Founders. That’s apparent from his nomination acceptance speech at GOP Convention this summer, which was dominated by alarmist hyperbole (“attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life”) hubristic promises (“beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored”); and a vox populi conception of the presidency: “I AM YOUR VOICE” (ALLCAPS in the prepared-for-delivery version released by the campaign).

In a famous (perhaps borrowed) refrain to one of his speeches, Barack Obama intoned: “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.” In this case, they do: how the president communicates reveals how he views the office—and how he intends to wield power. Trump has given us ample reason to worry on that score.

President Barack Obama leaves office today at Noon. His critics are happy to see him go, even as some acknowledge that he carried himself with dignity and grace for eight years in office. He departs the presidency with favorable approval ratings among the public at large, but is handing over power to a person who seems committed to overturning everything that he has done.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is enigmatic, at best. Obama, in contrast, had a concise and tidy way to explain his approach : “Don’t do stupid s***.”

Alas, he wasn’t always successful. For all the complaints that Obama was too reticent to use military power, his actions as president don’t betray great skepticism of kinetic military operations (aka war). Some of those not-quite-wars weren’t entirely successful, others were an abysmal failure. I discuss some of these issues in this podcast with Caleb Brown.

He twice increased the number of U.S. troops into Afghanistan in 2009, even though he doubted at the time that they would be able to accomplish their mission. The United States still has 8,500 U.S. troops fighting in what is now America’s longest war.

Without congressional authorization, he carried out an air campaign over Libya that contributed to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi’s decades-long regime. Few people shed any tears for the crazy colonel (Hillary Clinton even laughed about it), but the country has been gripped by chaos and violence ever since.

Obama’s war against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq similarly lacked congressional authorization. It has been marginally more effective, largely because the many different actors threatened by ISIS’s reign of terror have managed to squeeze it on all sides. But, as in Libya, the question of what comes after looms large.

And when Barack Obama wasn’t willing to use American military power directly, through either ground troops or drones, he did provide assistance, including lethal assistance, to those who were doing the fighting. But war by proxy is always difficult, as the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen attest.

The United States has struggled to prevail militarily in a host of conflicts during Barack Obama’s two terms in office. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Obama hasn’t used force often enough, or doggedly enough, or smartly enough. More likely, it means that many of the problems that he has attempted to solve aren’t conducive to military solutions. And the claim that Obama has gutted the U.S. military conveniently ignores that Pentagon spending was higher during his eight years in office than during George W. Bush’s, and that we spend more every year, in real terms, than we spent during the Cold War. Military spending is down since 2012, but is still 30 percent higher than in 2001.

On the plus side, Barack Obama should get credit for normalizing relations with Cuba and moving to expand economic relations with our Caribbean neighbor. Critics of the move, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R‑FL), point out that Raul Castro’s regime hasn’t reciprocated by improving its human rights record. But the embargo has similarly failed to crack open the regime. Congress and incoming-President Trump should finish the job, relax the remaining restrictions, and enable greater interactions between the Cuban people and their neighbors to the north.

President Obama successfully negotiated a deal that makes it substantially harder for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Critics claim that there was a better deal to be had, or that there should have been no deal at all. But, without a deal, Iran was well on its way to becoming a nuclear weapon state, and military action would have merely delayed the program, and at great cost in human lives. The deal will need to be monitored closely, as Secretary of Defense nominee James Mattis affirmed in his confirmation hearings last week. A progress review by the International Crisis Group on the one-year anniversary of the deal’s implementation concluded that, thus far, it was “effectively and verifiably blocking all potential pathways for Iran to race toward nuclear weapons, while opening the door to the country’s international rehabilitation and economic recovery.”

Lastly, President Obama deserves credit for resisting the bipartisan calls to get the United States more deeply embroiled in the Syrian civil war. His greatest error with respect to Syria was his demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “must go”, and his proclaimed red line concerning the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against opposition forces. He wisely backed away from this ill-considered pledge when he ignored the political class in Washington, and listened to the America people who wanted no part of another Middle Eastern conflict. The Syrian civil war is a grave human tragedy, with hundreds of thousands killed, and millions driven from their homes. But Obama’s critics, who believe he should have defied public opinion, and launched military strikes in September 2013, fail to show how such actions would have hastened the war’s end.

We should judge U.S. president’s foreign policies by whether they improved American security and prosperity, or whether they made Americans less safe and less prosperous. By that standard, Barack Obama could have done far worse.