Is the Populist Right Making American Democracy Impossible?

 

"To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle." Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981

Our Founding Fathers started out with rash assumptions: 1. one man rule was intolerable, arbitrary and cruel, 2. leaders of our new democracy might have internal disagreements, but they would all be men (sorry, but that’s who they assumed would be elected) of integrity, putting the good of the nation ahead of their own interests and their political party. They had even higher expectations for the men appointed to the Supreme Court. How optimistic they were. And dead wrong. And how times have changed, threatening our democracy to its core.

The majority of Americans feel Donald Trump is responsible for the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol – a cornerstone of Trump’s quest for continuing in office despite his election loss. Even before the recent House January 6th Committee televised public hearings, an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted just after the attack in January 2021 and an ABC News/Ipsos poll in December 2021 found over half of Americans thought Trump should be charged with the crime of inciting a riot. Those sentiments have only increased.

“According to ABC News (June 19th): With the first full week of hearings for the House select committee's investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol now complete, nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe former President Donald Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the incident, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

“Six in 10 Americans also believe the committee is conducting a fair and impartial investigation, according to the poll… In the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, 58% of Americans think Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the riot.” Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss, mirrored in the official position of most Republicans in Congress, is the first time in American history where a president, using the same electoral process used by 44 previous presidents (45 if you count Trump in 2017), refused to accept an orderly transition of power, a process firm affirmed by George Washington.

“By 1796, George Washington had created a solid government for the new Republic. But he was tired; the political wrangling taken its toll on him. Had he wanted a third term, there is no doubt he would’ve been reelected, but he longed to return to Mount Vernon to live out his years as a farmer…

“At the time, America was the first nation in modern history to try an election-based form of democratic government, known as a constitutional republic. The rules by which the government operated were set up in the Constitution, and the people elected their representatives. By stepping down after two terms, Washington proved that a person of character can avoid being corrupted by power.” Historian Tim George. But then George Washington was man of integrity, as our Founding Fathers had assumed. But we’ve had several instances of elected US presidents who fell well below that bar.

Let’s start with the ranking of the ten worst presidents in American history. Looking at one of several rankings, all with substantially similar results. The first shock is that Donald Trump, the first president in our history who opposed an orderly transition following an election, was not judged to be the worst in a USA survey of presidential rankings. “In compiling its 10 Worst Presidents rankings, U.S. News averaged presidents' scores from three separate metrics: C-SPAN's 2021 Presidential Historians Survey, Siena College's Presidential Expert Poll and the Presidential Greatness Rankings conducted by professors at the University of Houston and Boise State University.”

Pre-Civil War President James Buchanan, who refused to challenge either the spread of slavery or the growing bloc of states that became the Confederacy, ranks lower on the above poll. On other polls, one of these fellows (but never both) also rank lower: post-Civil War President Andrew Johnson, who survived impeachment after opposing Reconstruction initiatives, including the 14th amendment, or Zachary Taylor, who died in office after in 1850 after one year in office, forgettable and inept… and probably personally responsible for the demise of the Whig Party.

The assumption of personal integrity lies behind the only real ethical restriction on the president: the emoluments clause: “Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from any ‘King, Prince, or foreign State,’ without congressional consent. This clause is meant to prevent external influence and corruption of American officers by foreign States.” The Legal Information Institute of Cornell University.

While most federal judges are subject to an extensive list of congressionally mandated ethics requirements, that does not extend to justices of the US Supreme Court. Except as noted above, the remedy for a corrupt president or Supreme Court justice is impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction/removal from office by a subsequent trial in the Senate. Remember, it was the Republican Party that was the prime mover that removed Republican President, Richard Nixon (facing removal from office, he resigned on August 8, 1974, and was subsequently pardoned of all criminal activity by President Gerald Ford).

Today, we face an ex-American President, willing to polarize this nation into increasingly violent irreconcilable difference to enhance his personal power at any price, and a Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, unwilling to recuse himself from cases involving election irregularities, irregularities which his wife Virginia (“Ginny”) helped propagate. He even was the sole dissenting justice in a case that forced Donald Trump to turn over internal documents to the January 6th Committee… documents that eventually produced correspondence from Ginny to the White House supporting reversing a legitimate election.

We face a genuine threat to our country. Over half of voting-age Americans, regardless of party, fear that the United States faces an end to democracy in the near future. See my June 16th Apathy & Awareness - Voters Reading Ballot Initiatives and Candidate Bios? LOL, LOL, LOL blog for the underlying polling. Legislation and judicial rulings

Gun ownership and lax gun laws (even with the token “gun control” legislation pending in Congress), the proliferation of assault weapons and an American right-wing tolerance for violence for political means, augur badly for our future. A pro-rural bias built in to our Constitution (according 2 US Senators to each state regardless of population), a de facto blank check right for special interests (mostly right-wing, it turned out) to fund political campaigns (other than those controlled by a candidate under Citizens United vs FED), a biased Supreme Court tilted populist by Donald Trump, and a flurry of unchecked severe gerrymandering and voting restrictions imposed by red states since the 2020 election suggest that a populist minority, backed by the same militia who were part of the Capitol insurrection, will dominate the midterm and possibly the 2024 presidential elections.

Red state positions on gun control, climate change, abortion and criminal responsibility for the illegal efforts to undo the 2020 election reflect a vociferous minority opinion; the majority is being marginalized. Will this minority control continue? Stand back and stand by.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless more Americans speak up, vote in overwhelming numbers, and act with the passion necessary to return us to democracy, I believe that most living Americans will witness a severe lurch into an American autocracy with strong fundamentalist Christian leanings.