[Steuard]

In principle, flagrant abuse of the pardon power is blocked by Congress's ability to impeach and remove a President who engages in such abuse.

In practice, that has always been an ineffective threat against Presidents who are within days of leaving office anyway. And more importantly, the framers of the Constitution seemed to have entirely failed to imagine a party like today's Republicans who value strict personal loyalty to the President over every other principle of government.

[kjkjadksj]

I wonder how anomalous this presidency really is. Trump is not the first strong man bullheaded president who engaged in cronyism and systemic corruption. Most people don’t know the history of presidents though especially from centuries past. Maybe this broken state of the office we observe today has always been a viable option for people who payed attention enough to see it and are also evil enough to use it. Maybe this power has been specifically maintained intentionally for some time. Like a big open secret for those tasked with approving laws.

[atmavatar]

Please enlighten us: which former presidents have been similar strong man caricatures engaging in anywhere near the level of cronyism and systemic corruption as the current administration? What precisely did they do which demonstrates such behavior?

We've certainly had some colorful presidents in the past, but the current president is engaged in a lot of blatantly impeachable behavior, and as far as I know, we've never had such a passive and complicit Congress before.

[kjkjadksj]

I’d probably guess there were plenty of bad eggs. Andrew Jackson for example. Who learns about him in school though? Who talks about his administration today? And he probably isn’t the only one either. 1700s government was still in flux with plenty of cases of selfish infamous people and behavior. 1800s worldview among people in power was pretty notoriously ruthless. 1900s not much different. FDR was certainly a strongman above norms too, luckily many of the things he did with his share of political power had great benefits to people.