The house that Obama built

The safety-pin-wearing left is aghast that President Donald Trump could actually follow through on his promise to “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama” on his first day in office. He should do it.

Every president reverses some executive actions of his predecessor. President Barack Obama revoked a series of executive orders issued by President George W. Bush — including Bush’s executive order barring federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research; his executive order interpreting the Geneva Conventions with regard to the CIA’s detention of captured terrorists; and several Bush executive orders limiting the power of labor unions in dealing with federal contractors.

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Trump set to roll back Obama policies on energy, environment

Trump is already working to erase Obama’s legacy from history

Trump’s chance to change the narrative

Scoppe: Of course he’s my president; that’s how our country works

Krauthammer: How the new Republican majority can succeed

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Obama’s actions were not unprecedented. Bush not only reversed executive orders of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, but in 2002 he actually withdrew the United States from a treaty Clinton had signed — the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court.

The reason Obama’s legacy is so vulnerable today is that the 44th president relied more on executive actions — issuing not only executive orders, but also a record number of rules, regulations and agency directives to legislate around Congress and impose his agenda.

After he lost control of the Senate in 2014, Obama announced: “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation.… I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” When Obama could not pass his immigration reform to provide amnesty for entire categories of people not here legally, he tried to impose it on the American people though unlawful executive action — a move The Washington Post’s editorial board called a “massive unilateral act” that “flies in the face of congressional intent.” When he could not pass his cap-and-trade bill, he used the Clean Air Act to impose it by executive action, twisting the meaning of the law in a manner that even The New York Times said was “stretching the intent of a law decades old and not written with climate change in mind.” He took executive actions on everything from gun control and financial regulation to health care and transgender bathrooms.

Some of Obama’s executive actions will be easy to repeal. Trump can, with the stroke of his pen, reverse Obama’s orders to close Guantanamo Bay. He can also scrap the Paris Agreement on climate change that Obama signed in September, by simply announcing that the United States will not fulfill its obligations. Obama’s executive actions under Title IX denying due process to those accused of sexual assault and requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that do not match their biological gender are easily reversed. They were issued as guidance that do have any force of law at all, yet the Education Department is enforcing them as if they did. Repealing those won’t take anything more than Trump’s new education secretary simply saying, “Never mind.”

Obama imposed more than 600 “major” regulations, those that cost the economy $100 million or more. Many of those will be difficult to do undo, because they were issued through notice and comment by the agencies. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency would have to formally revoke the Clean Power Act, which could lead to litigation. That’s why it’s so important for Trump to put good justices on the Supreme Court, so they can not only strike down illegal regulations but also set precedents that will be binding on future presidents as well.

If Trump really wants to shake up Washington, he should issue a single executive order on Day One repealing all of Obama’s executive orders. Then, he could go back and decide which, if any, to reinstate.

It’s not just Obama’s executive actions that will soon be reversed. His signature legislative achievement, Obamacare, is headed for repeal — and he has no one to blame but himself. Obama passed his health-care reform without any Republican buy-in. Now that Republicans control both Congress and the White House, they have no incentive to preserve the law.

From legislation to executive action, the lesson is clear: The value of bipartisan compromise is not just about optics. If you build consensus, then your actions will last. But if you impose your agenda on an unwilling country, it is going to get repealed or reversed when the other party comes to power.

There is wisdom in the scriptural admonition to “be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” instead of the “foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

Obama built his legacy on the sand of unilateralism, instead of the rock of bipartisan consensus. And great will be the fall of it come Jan. 20, 2017.