The Crisis in American Democracy Gerry OShea
William
Shakespeare, widely regarded as the world’s greatest dramatist, frequently
focuses on how the unbridled aspiration for power and aggrandizement leads to tragic
consequences. Lord Acton’s famous dictum that all power corrupts is confirmed
in many of his plays with an abundance of shady deals and compromised
principles.
Of course,
democracy, the concept that political power resides with the people, didn’t
come to the fore for nearly two hundred years after Shakespeare’s time.
However, the overwhelming drive to get to the top remains a vibrant theme of
modern politics. Shakespeare’s tragic character, Macbeth, makes no bones about
his motivation in words that still resonate today, “I have no spur to prick the
side of my intent only vaulting ambition.”
Donald Trump
can’t abide being a loser. He must win to salve the insatiable demands of his
ego. In a Commencement address in the Naval Academy in 2018 he declared that,
“Winning is such a great thing. Nothing like winning. Victory, winning, that’s
what it is all about.”
When he
stated unequivocally before a vote was cast that there could only be one victor
in the November 2020 presidential election, he was openly repudiating 250 years
of democracy in the United States. The clear and unquestioned understanding of
all previous presidential candidates affirmed that the winner is declared based
on who gets the most votes in the Electoral College.
Joe Biden won
a clear majority in the November election, but Mr. Trump, true to his pre-election
emanations, did not accept the results, asserting that all kinds of
skullduggery caused him to lose. His lawyers claimed various corrupt practices
in the vote-counting protocols, including the alleged importation of millions
of fake Biden ballots from China and Venezuela.
They submitted their “proof” of Democratic
malfeasance to over sixty judges who rejected their claims out of hand,
refusing even to hear their cases because of the lack of any real evidence.
Vice-president
Pence was asked by his boss and other top White House leaders not to rubber
stamp the election results which is part of his Constitutional role. To his
great credit, he rejected these persistent demands from the Oval Office and
certified Mr. Biden as the winner. His
recommendation was upheld by a clear majority of the House of Representatives,
although, significantly, 147 Republicans voted against confirmation.
This vote
was preceded by a riot in the Capitol Building where the insurrectionists
singled out Mike Pence for hanging and Nancy Pelosi for similarly harsh
treatment as they bludgeoned their way into the halls where many legislators
were working. This chaotic and violent behavior on January 6th has ushered
in a surreal and frightening chapter in the American story.
Donald Trump
still claims that he won the November contest, and anyone in his party who says
otherwise is pilloried as somehow colluding in treachery. Amazingly, repeated
surveys of Republican voters reveal that two out of three continue to believe
that the Democrats stole the election. That is close to fifty million
Americans.
The story
gets worse because around twenty million of these voters condone using violence
to reverse the result.
Almost half of all Republicans express
admiration for the thugs who invaded the Capitol, killing some people and
terrorizing the rest, while chasing a scared Mr. Pence and other leaders into
hiding in the building that is seen as a symbol of democracy throughout the
world.
Republicans,
led by the former president, have devised a strategy to make sure that the next
time the secretaries of state and governors in swing states will refuse to sign
off if the Democrat candidate wins. They are openly engaging in widespread
voter suppression.
In
Georgia, for instance, Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger, two loyal conservative Republicans, are being primaried because
they rejected calls to change the results in that state.
Trump
pleaded with Raffensperger to find him a mere 11,780 votes – “you could always
say, you know, that you miscalculated” - that would edge him ahead in the
Georgia count. The Secretary of State refused, explaining that his job was to
affirm the voters’ decision. Astonishingly, this principled Republican is still
being excoriated by the former president and his followers who have prodded
Assemblyman Jody Dice to run against him for the Republican nomination for that
job.
Trump has
also persuaded former Senator David Perdue to challenge Governor Kemp because
he stood with Raffensperger during the November election fracas. Perdue, a
former United States senator, is running on a platform that Kemp should have
refused to sign the document that affirmed Biden’s victory. If a similar
circumstance arises in 2024, and Perdue is elected governor he will refuse to
certify the results.
Is this really where our Republic finds itself?
These men are being fiercely opposed by well-funded opponents promoted by the
former president because they confirmed the official results of the
presidential election in their state. Are Americans awake to the implications
of what is going on? Many leading Republicans are effectively asserting that
victory for their party is the only acceptable outcome of an election.
And similar
shenanigans are happening in ten other states where this party has local
majorities. Last November, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson and some Republican state
lawmakers proposed a hostile takeover of election management in the swing state
of Wisconsin.
Johnson brazenly told the New York Times, “Unfortunately,
I don’t expect Democrats to follow the rules and other people don’t either and
that’s the problem.” And Johnson’s conclusion: The current system of bipartisan
oversight should be abolished leaving Republican legislators in control of the
elections.
Commenting
on these negative trends, evident in most states where Republicans have a
majority, Laura Thornton, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy,
issued an ominous warning, “This contempt for past standards creates myriad
opportunities for malign actors, foreign and domestic, to drive our democracy
into a death spiral.”
There is
another ugly dimension to this dismantling of democratic procedures which is exemplified
by Congressman Peter Meijer from Michigan who was elected to congress in
January 2021 at the age of 33. After a few days in his new job, he voted with
nine other Republican congressmen to impeach President Trump for his leadership
of the riot in the Capitol.
This action
resulted in vituperative phone messages and threats of physical revenge for his
conscientious vote. He reported that he took these warnings seriously and
started wearing body armor and changing his routines in and around his new workplace.
Other
Republican members of Congress who have defied the Trump line receive similar
threats. Mr. Meijer has spoken publicly about many of his colleagues agreeing
with his critical perspective on the actions of the armed mob that attempted to
overthrow the election, but they dare not speak out because they fear for their
own and their families’ safety.
Donald
Trump’s ambition, unchecked and bereft of any moral mooring, largely accounts
for this sorry state. He seems to be riding high, but he should heed
Shakespeare’s warning that there are dire consequences of a leader caving to
blind ambition, “bloody instructions, which being taught, return to plague the
inventor.”
Gerry
OShea blogs at wemustbetalking.com
Comments
Post a Comment