Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel under Obama, and Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official under George W. Bush, co-wrote a systematic account of where the modern presidency's guardrails proved too weak — and a legislative and administrative fix for each one.
Their diagnosis runs through the exact terrain this tracker covers: financial conflicts of interest and the case for mandatory divestment or blind trusts, the practical toothlessness of the emoluments clauses without a clear enforcement mechanism, and a pardon power exercised with essentially no check when used for self-interested or transactional reasons.
They also address the "watchdog" side directly — inspectors general who can be removed without explanation, an Office of Government Ethics with no enforcement teeth, and a White House counsel's office structurally conflicted between serving the president personally and serving the presidency as an institution.
Written from across the aisle, the book treats these as structural vulnerabilities in the office itself, not partisan grievances — arguing that whoever holds the presidency next will face the same temptations unless the specific gaps get closed by statute, not by norms alone.
Reforms they proposed
- Require presidential candidates and officeholders to divest or use a genuine blind trust for conflicting assets
- Give the emoluments clauses a real enforcement mechanism, not just a constitutional prohibition
- Limit the pardon power's use for self-interested or transactional grants
- Protect inspectors general from removal without cause or explanation
- Strengthen the Office of Government Ethics' authority to actually investigate and sanction