One Year In

I have a searing memory of Trump’s Inaugural address last year, which presented his dystopian view of America and, in hindsight, gave us a glimpse of the political year he would bring us: blustering lies and bold attempts to turn back every piece of progress that the Obama Administration had managed to secure from the last eight years of a begrudging and polarized Republican party.

In the days immediately after Trump’s ugly January 2017 speech, my students and I studied Jefferson’s inaugural address in 1801, the product of another election that bitterly divided the nation.  In his address, President Jefferson emphasized all the things that bound the nation together and he organized a vision of continued unity, with both political parties, the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, working together in the national interest.  Sparks between the two sides would still fly, but with a measured, thoughtful leader at the helm, the nation didn’t just survive.  It endured.

I keep thinking of 1801 as I assess the year that was 2017 and the year that 2018 is shaping up to be.  I continue to believe that we are living in an era of party change; I think that the Republican party is in the midst of a spectacular smash-up.  But as the party crashes, the nation is experiencing collateral damage that may endure far longer than I anticipated when Trump won the presidency in 2016.  His first year was a wake-up call to the notion that though the presidency isn’t particularly powerful as conceived in the Constitution, it has become very powerful indeed.  It was a reminder that checks and balances in the form of legislative power only work when the legislature is prepared to fulfill its responsibilities.

We don’t have that kind of Congress right now.  Republicans, so polarized that the only thing that unites them is their fear of losing power, have yielded authority to a president that they know to be ill-informed, racist, and self-absorbed.  The current shutdown, an unprecedented event when one party has control of both the executive and legislative branch, is evidence that the GOP has boarded the Trump Train and won’t get off even as it derails.

A party willing to jam through a tax plan that only 30% of the nation approved of can’t pull together a budget plan.  Why?  Because they are torn apart on what to do for the Dreamers and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.  This, even as DACA and CHIP enjoy the support of north of 80% of the American public.  The only thing more irrational than that sentence is today’s Republican party.  

If there is hope for a future it’s got to come from within ourselves.  In a government built upon the nation of “We the people,” it’s well-past time for the people to suit up and require our government to govern in our interests and to do it well.  It’s not easy because we are often an ill-informed citizenry, taking greater joy in name-calling and the news of Kardashians, when we should be doing the hard work of asking difficult questions and informing ourselves.  I have long believed that the people get the government that they deserve.  I believe that the current mess reflects that painful reality.  We must demand better of ourselves as citizens so that we can demand more of our government and leaders.  It won’t be easy but it is not impossible and it is the only path forward.  Greatness must lie within the people; only then can we find the leaders we deserve.