What has changed here is that loyalty to the head of state is the primary determinant for all of the gray areas — and that guy can be as arbitrary and capricious as he wants. Context always matters; context is the difference between prerogative and corruption.
Unfortunately, we are waaaaay past that point.
That's incredibly naive. Bureaucracies have agendas either intentionally (political appointments) or organically.
The corruption may be more brazen and direct under Trump but the incentives have always been there
I agree that holding people accountable today is important if and when laws are broken. But surely you can't just stop there. We don't need to codify legal rules perfectly, but acknowledging that we can't should lead to much more hesitation with the powers we allow and the sheer size of our legal codes.
Dealing with an immediate problem first makes sense. We would need to follow that up with overhauling our laws to better ensure this can't happen again. We're never going to do that though, solving the root cause is slow, tedious, and politically untenable.
Are you arguing that the fuzziness was built into the system previously to allow presidents to pick winners and losers in the auto industry? Do you know if there are clear examples of past presidents actually using that power?