Donald Trump ran for the White House as a change agent hostile to the habits of Washington, the place he nicknamed “the swamp.” It worked. But the customs he continues to upend as president are the scaffolding that supports the otherwise fragile words of our written Constitution. Mr. Trump's rejection of them is more threatening to both his presidency and our constitutional regime than any technical violation of the law that he has been accused of (at least so far).
Customs are the punctuation marks of republican politics, the silent guides we follow without pausing to consider their authority. They operate in a space that is difficult for formal rules to codify. That the president of the United States speaks with caution and dignity, that he exercises the pardon power the Constitution grants him soberly rather than wantonly, that he respects the independence of law enforcement, and that, to the extent reasonable politics permit, he speaks truthfully — these are all customs, not laws. Law is powerless to impose them and powerless without them.
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