His China, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Mongolia, Taiwan, the South China Sea, that's his dream, is to keep all of that under his control.
He's running into trouble.
His economy is faltering.
You know, for economies to succeed, they need to open themselves to foreign markets.
They need people to feel free to express themselves, to innovate, to create.
And all of that is stifled in China.
So he's running into a cul-de-sac.
And we don't know what's going to happen.
It does seem to me quite dangerous when you consider what could happen over Taiwan, for instance.
We've already seen the fall of Hong Kong.
The future is not that bright.
China, the U.S., and the rise of Xi Jinping premieres tonight, 10 p.m. Eastern on PBS, available to stream on PBS's frontline website and the PBS video app.
Martin Smith is the producer, director, correspondent for it.
Congratulations, and thank you for the time this morning.
John, thank you very much for having me.
Ed Whelan's back at our desk.
He is the past president, current Antonin Scalia chair in constitutional studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Ed Whalen, remind viewers what EPPC is.
Well, we're a think tank, the premier think tank in D.C. dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to the broad range of issues of public policy.
And how long have you been there?
20 plus years now.
Past president, as we said, expertise in constitutional studies.
Two weeks ago in the National Review, you wrote a column about, you called it the, quote, terrible anti-constitutional scheme of recess appointments.
Why is it a terrible and anti-constitutional scheme?
Well, what I'm referring to is the idea that's being talked about that Donald Trump would try to force the Senate to adjourn, perhaps right on Inauguration Day, and proceed to make blanket recess appointments to top cabinet offices.
That would be, I think, an outrageous upsetting of the constitutional scheme, which contemplates that the Senate will give advice and consent, especially on high offices.
Now, as Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, this provision in the Constitution that gives the Senate authority to advise and consent on nominations is really important in making sure that the president makes high quality picks.
Absent that check, the president could indulge his own whims, his own favors, and as Hamilton put it, might even appoint someone simply because that person possesses a necessary insignificance and pliancy to render him the obsequious instruments of the president's pleasure.
So this was a fundamental feature of the Constitution.
It is a fundamental feature.
And yes, to be sure, there is also a provision for recess appointments in the Constitution.
That, as Hamilton put it, is an auxiliary provision designed to supplement this core provision.
This recess appointment scheme would turn things on its head, and there's never been anything like it in American history.
Take us back a step.
What does advise and consent mean in constitutional terms?
That's the process by which the Senate decides whether to approve or reject a president's nominees.
So it's usually a majority vote process.
A nomination goes through the Senate, goes through a hearing in the appropriate committee, and then is voted up or down by the Senate.
So why were recess appointments put in in the first place?
What was the point of them?
The recess appointment provision, it's quite clear, was put in to address the situation in which the Senate was not available to act on a vacancy, a nomination to vacancy that had just arisen.
It's been interpreted very expansively, and I'm fine for present purposes on that expansive interpretation.
I'm not challenging that when I raise my objections to President-elect Trump's scheme.
The problem is that, again, he would try to force a recess of the Senate, something that plainly is way outside the purpose of the recess appointments provision, in order to bypass the Senate's advice and consent provision and install high-level cabinet officers.
How does one force a recess of the Senate?
Well, that's a good question.
There are two paths that President Trump or his advisors have apparently been considering.
The first would be to coax and cajole the Senate into recessing itself.
So I would not call that forcing.
It would be, I think, a shameful act if the Senate were to do so.
I don't think it will.
But the scheme to force would use, or I would say misuse, a provision of the Constitution that enables the President to adjourn both houses in the event of a disagreement between the Houses on the time of adjournment.
This is in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, I believe.
It's a provision that's never been used before.
It's one that I don't think could lawfully be used in this instance.
But the idea would be to have the House collude with the President to force the Senate out of session.
What would be the point of giving the President that power in the Constitution?
Well, I think the basic point is that sometimes the Houses might disagree on whether the other House can adjourn.
Let me go back a step.
The House, I'm sorry, the Constitution says that if a House is to adjourn for more than three days, it needs to get the consent of the other House.
So you can imagine a situation in which one House doesn't consent to the adjournment of the other.
And in that situation, you might need a tiebreaker.
The President can come in and adjourn them both, the provision says.
Now, what we have here is not a situation in which the Senate would be seeking to adjourn and wouldn't be getting the House's consent.
On the contrary, it's a situation in which the Senate would want to stay in session.
And there's no role for the House to object to the Senate staying in session.
Any disagreement on the House's part with the Senate staying in session is no more constitutionally significant than your or my disagreement with that.
So I don't think it possibly gives rise to a disagreement within the meaning of Article II, Section 3.
26 minutes ago on C-SPAN, viewers saw a pro forma session.
What is a pro forma session?
It was one in the House, but they also have pro forma sessions in the Senate as well.
That's correct.
Pro forma sessions have become fairly common, as I understand it, in the Senate since the Supreme Court's ruling 10 years ago on recess appointments in a case called NLRB versus Noel Canning.
They might well have existed before then.
I'm not fully aware of the history.
But the idea is to prevent a recess of sufficient length that the President could make a recess appointment during that time.
What the majority said of Noel Canning is that a recess of 10 days is presumptively enough to allow an intra-session recess appointment.
If you have these pro forma sessions every three days, you never have a 10-day recess arise.
Did the Constitution ever contemplate the idea of senators turning over their advice and consent power to a president by saying, we will not be in session and allow you to do a recess appointment?
Well, I think it's a deeply anti-constitutional idea.
I don't see anything in the Constitution that contemplates it.
Is it within the bounds of the Senate to abdicate its responsibility?