A System of Checks and Balances

It’s no secret that I never liked - or respected - Donald Trump.  Aware that he won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by 3 million, I felt that he was a barely legitimate president, one whose term in office should be governed by a sense of the fragility of his hold on the White House. 

But from the outset of his term in office, Trump seemed utterly unwilling to acknowledge this reality, let alone govern as if it was important.  The national divide that was present on Election Day 2016 would only grow larger.  At this writing it seems a chasm we may never bridge.

I didn’t call for impeachment the day Trump took office and for some months afterward.  Though I was increasingly horrified by his Administration, and confident that he had earned impeachment through the emolument clause at minimum, I didn’t think impeachment was the answer.  I thought that checks and balances would work.  I found a partial answer in the Congressional elections of 2018, when Democrats and Nancy Pelosi took control of the House of Representatives.  I felt better, as if there might be some credible check on an increasingly incompetent and self-serving president. But I still withheld my support for impeachment.

It’s only been in the past few months, as Trump’s incompetencies have grown greater and more dangerous; as our national divide has followed, that I supported an impeachment investigation.  In my case, it’s been less about the emoluments clause or the obvious high crimes and misdemeanors than it has been Trump’s absolute unwillingness to acknowledge the limits on his power.  He’s a tyrant with authoritarian aspirations and no sense that there is a boundary to his authority.

And then came the Ukrainian phone call revelations.  None of it was surprising, though I’ll confess some shock at the GOP’s continued willingness to support this president and their party-above-national interest-position.  I understand that the House impeachment inquiry poses the risk of being political; that it’s unlikely to end with a Senate conviction.  At this juncture, that’s not the point.  Impeachment is political.  But so is our current crisis.

The point is that we have a Constitution that organizes, demands, and can only function effectively with checks and balances in practice.  The last three years has me fearful that the check and balance tradition has been smashed beyond repair.  A House investigation and impeachment inquiry are the only chance we have to restore the balance; too once again have a Constitutional government.  So I support the House impeachment inquiry in the strong belief that such an inquiry is the only way we can preserve the American system.

If that sounds dramatic, it is.  As a nation, we are at the crossroads.  If we wish to be a nation with Constitutional checks and balances, we must take action.  The option on the table is impeachment.  I support it.

Reflections on a Nicer November

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard an interview with Joe Biden.  He’s written a book about his son Bo and in the media tour, plenty of journalists are asking him questions about the current political scene.  I was struck again by how much I miss civil, articulate, and thoughtful political discourse from leaders who wish to help us to be better.  Biden pointed out the danger of silence in the face of Nazi and KKK-supporters and called it out by noting that, “silence is complicity." At one point in the interview he notes that American influence and strength in the world is less about “the example of our power” and more about “the power of our example.”  It was refreshing and honest.  It was leadership.  Vice President Biden spoke of a nation I want to be part of; one that is aspirational in search of being better together.  

In last week’s election, New Jersey elected a Democrat as our next Governor.  His name is Phil Murphy.  He comes into office with a Lt. Governor named Sheila Oliver, New Jersey’s first African American in the position.  In this morning’s news, I learned that Murphy’s transition committees are majority woman and majority people of color.  Murphy is white, a former banker, and at the start I feel like we may very well have a thoughtful woke leader on hand.  In any case, it’s a promising beginning and I feel optimistic, a far cry from the sentiments that consumed me last November.

As I think about this year of Trump, I’m struck by the realization that things have been every bit as horrifying as I feared.  Trump had no honeymoon, but in all fairness he never made a single effort to govern as a leader with a tentative hold on the position.  Rather than acknowledge the reality that winning the Electoral College without securing a majority of the national vote placed him on thin ice, he bullied forward with slippery lies (looking at you, inaugural crowd claims) and an attachment to the bully side of the pulpit that show him to be small-minded, self-absorbed, and ignorant.

At every juncture, Trump has dodged responsibility, blaming the Obama Administration for all foreign policy challenges he faces and announcing that all policy failures belong to Congress.  He doesn’t understand even the most basic principles of our system of government and he doesn’t care to try to understand.  He’s made things uglier and meaner; his only skills are in self-aggrandizement and lying.  He uses those deceptions to attack everyone, including the media, and challenge the very idea that truth exists.

At 10 months in to his leadership, his presidential approval rating is the lowest of any president in the modern era.  It shows signs of sinking further.  As a nation, we are divided and wary, some of us furiously angry and others of us disheartened and afraid.  It doesn’t feel very great.

Last week’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia offer the prospect of much-needed hope; a semblance of measured reason in a sea of ugly tweets and lies.  I find myself clinging to them as we head into 2018 and the next electoral season.  There are signs that we understand the power of our example.  For ourselves and the world I sure hope that is the case.

Living in Hope

In preparation for a post-election essay celebrating the outcome, I had collected an assortment of unflattering snippets and thoughts about Donald Trump.  I expected him to lose the election and these notions were going to help me to explain (and celebrate!) his defeat.  Obviously, events on the ground eclipsed my plans.

At first, I was at a loss to explain the election outcome.  As a political scientist who has been studying elections for the last 30 years, this was rather startling to me.  Politics is something that always I understand.  To be unsure of what had happened and especially why it had happened contributed to my anxiety about the outcome of the election.  On Friday, in a frustrated response to the panic I was reading on-line, I pointed out on Twitter that we still have a Constitution that protects our rights and enshrines the notion of three branches of government obligated to check and balance one another.  I was harassed by some folks who advised me to study the world and to understand constitutions.  They feel that ours is under attack. Those accusations didn’t make me angry as much as  they reminded me how fear fuels anger, resentment, and ignorance.  It also reinforced my sense of how scared Donald Trump makes people.

I am concerned about Donald Trump.  But I refuse to live in fear.

I do understand constitutions and their functions.  I know them well, having spent a nearly thirty year career learning and teaching about constitutions.  I know when constitutional democracies (real ones, not the pretend democracies set up by authoritarian states) are at risk.

We are not in that circumstance.

The United States has a robust constitution and a system built on rule of law.  It’s neither perfect nor impenetrable.  But it has endured for more than 200 years and in that time has always been used to expand rights.  The 2016 election of Donald Trump is unsettling.  But it is not evidence that the Constitution has unravelled.  As Americans, we should always be careful and vigilant to ensure that constitutional protections of our individual liberty endure.  That is the case no matter who wins elections.  The 2016 election outcome finds me vigilant and active.  But I am not in a panic.  It is up to every one of us to ensure that a risk to our constitutionally-protected liberty never materializes.

In the 2016 election, I listened to Donald Trump and I heard racism, bigotry, misogyny, and hate wrapped in an alarming level of ignorance.  I cast a ballot against those notions.

Many of my fellow voters (though not all or even most of them…..Hillary won the popular vote), heard the same Donald Trump that I heard.  I expect that some Trump voters heard the same ideas I heard, embraced them, and voted for the racism and bigotry.  But some of them heard the same Donald Trump that I heard and drew different conclusions.  I disagree with both set of the Trump voters.  But they are my fellow citizens and it is my obligation to understand them.

I do not expect Donald Trump, his policies, and his advisors to succeed in growing our economy or fixing our income inequality.  I reject his approach to immigration,  I am fearful of the damage his ideas would cause.   New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb repeated a Mark Twain quote that seems timely right now, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”  I was a patriot on Tuesday when I thought Hillary would win. I am a patriot today, though she lost the election.

Being a patriot means that I will remind myself of the privileges I have experienced in life and the obligations that they engender.   As a patriot, I will stand for the constitutional protections that are dear to us all.  I will be vigilant and stand up to racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and efforts to marginalize disabled people.   I will be an ally and a safe place for those who are afraid.  I will be brave in the face of ignorance, fear, and hate.  I will continue to speak my mind.  I will be careful and kind.  I will love my fellow citizens despite their frailties.  I will work tirelessly for the kind of policies I want our nation to adopt.

I refuse to live in fear.

I will live in hope.

On Electoral Legitimacy

While I don’t think it’s been lost in the daily attention to Trump’s latest ridiculous claims, I confess that I am increasingly concerned about his suggestions that he believes the election may be rigged.  In a democracy, that’s a dangerous charge to be throwing around, especially when it’s not born out by the facts.  I think that Trump is like a playground bully, hedging against the prospect that he will lose the election by floating the suggestion the whole process is illegitimate in the first place.  This is easy to dismiss, because it’s part of the usual Trump bluster and attack mode.  But such claims are deadly dangerous to our democracy and they must not be ignored.

Whether or not Trump actually thinks the process is rigged, the claim that it is sets up a very dangerous precedent.  It means that when he loses in November, he can derail our representative democracy and our Constitution all in an effort to assuage his outsized bruised ego.  Rather than graciously cede defeat to Hillary Clinton on November 8, he can instead announce that he was robbed, thus encouraging his followers to believe that our entire system of government is illegitimate.  His contributions to the Barack Obama birther movement suggest that he’s more than willing to derail democracy to promote himself.

A false claim that our system is “rigged” has the potential to do real and lasting damage to our republic.  The American system isn’t perfect; nothing is.  But neither is the system rigged.  We don’t have a problem with voter fraud (see this to understand just how little fraud exists).  The electoral college is peculiar and complicated, a creation of founders who worried about uncertainty as an electoral outcome.  But it is not rigged.  

Democratic systems like ours are built upon a foundation of trust and legitimacy.  Elections only work as a method for selecting leaders if all the participants fundamentally believe that a fair system is just that.  Winners of elections are seated into power; losers are free to criticize leadership and participate in other ways.  If electoral losers instead criticize the system as rigged or unfair, we all lose.  When the legitimacy of the system is in doubt, representative democracy fails.  

All of us need to call out Donald Trump on the matter of electoral legitimacy.  We cannot let him pretend that the election is rigged.  It is not an exaggeration to write that such claims can ruin our republic.  I commend the Republican leaders who have been critical of Trump on this matter.  I respect the fact that their desire for their party to hold control of government has a boundary of decency.  The rest of us, especially the media and Republican leaders in Congress, must also call out Trump on these dangerous false claims.