I won’t debate the merits of any of those policies, because you and I agree on policy more often than not. Where I will continue to be the scold is in the what’s-good-for-the-goose side of the coin. I can guarantee you that if you can create an albatross of a program with an executive order that the next Republican president will take us to places we’ve never dreamed of being. Trump took the example of Obama’s dreamers executive action and gave us the travel ban. President desantis will take the percent of the student loan forgiveness and give us the abortion gestapo or something. This isn’t academic chin stroking to me. It’s about imagining all the deranged shit that deranged people can dream up and put into action by executive fiat. It isn’t a good place.
My point is not "these are good policies" it's "these are centrist policies." They enjoy a plurality of support across the political spectrum. Just click one - nine out of ten Americans support some form of legal weed. By way of comparison, Trump selected Jeff "marijuana is the devil's lettuce" Sessions as his Attorney General before firing him for not being culture-warriory enough. Crazy executive orders? Eight days in, yo! The horse, as they say, has left the barn. By your logic, the correct move for the Biden administration is to come up with the most objectionably batshit executive orders they can think of just so they can provoke bipartisan legislation to limit executive orders for the good of the country. I can't believe you really think the Trump administration showed restraint when it came to executive orders. I can't believe you really think the Biden administration will somehow trod fresh ground that hasn't already been trampled to mud by Bush, Obama and Trump. I can fully believe that some part of you resists being painted by friends and relatives as some crazy Green New Deal liberal moonbat so you've gotta triangulate to "biden bad tho" despite any evidence to the contrary. You're in Michigan, yeah? Where the Republicans figured on kidnapping the governor to get their way? There's no "both sides" here. There's "government" and "fascist crazytown" and anyone who thinks the Republican Party is somehow going to do something reasonable between now and 2026 has not been paying attention.