Where Is Congress on the Kennedy Center Fight?

The name on the building was always the least interesting part of this fight. The Kennedy Center is a marble monument to a Democrat, and President Trump has made it his business to strip the old board and install people who actually share his vision for the place. That part of the story is straightforward, and frankly, it was a long time coming. But the real news here isn't the sign outside; it’s that the courts are being dragged into a tussle over arts patronage, and Congress has decided it has better things to do than settle a dispute that is squarely its own.

We find it telling that the President has to work through the judicial branch to get something as simple as a name change done. This is what happens when the legislative branch cedes its ground on everything from the budget to the decor of federal buildings. The man in the Oval Office is using the tools available to him, and he's not wrong to demand loyalty from appointees who are supposed to be executing his agenda. But this fight is a distraction, and it is a distraction precisely because Congress is content to hide behind the bench instead of doing the mundane work of oversight. The president shouldn't have to ask a judge for permission to run a federal agency.

The deeper issue is that the conservative majority on the board is being treated like intruders, which tells you how the left views any exercise of electoral power they don't control. They’d rather sue over repertory choices than admit they lost the culture war in the voting booth. Yet, our side shouldn’t be so eager to play along with this judicialized version of politics. Every time we let a court referee these spats, we lose the argument about executive authority. We are, in effect, admitting that the President needs a permission slip to do his job.

If the GOP-controlled Congress has any spine, they will step in and codify the president's authority over this institution, removing any lingering ambiguity about who answers to whom. Congress won't touch it, because touching it means taking sides, and taking sides means risking fundraising dollars. So instead, we get a constitutional showdown over a ballet company. That is a sad commentary on the state of governance, and it is a problem the courts cannot fix for us. Only the people's representatives can do that, and they are currently missing in action.