The Decline of Moderate Politics in
America Gerry
OShea
Aristotle,
the renowned ancient Greek philosopher, counseled his followers that moderation
should be their guiding principle in all deliberations. This advice is
encapsulated in his famous Latin dictum: in medio stat virtus, meaning
that wisdom and virtue are usually found by following a middle course, away
from extremes.
The history
of American politics since the end of the Second World War affirms this
perspective. With one exception, all presidents have been careful not to step
far outside the mainstream of popular beliefs. Democrats favor imposing higher
taxes on the wealthy and loosening the purse for anti-poverty and
infrastructure programs, while Republicans always preach in favor of lower tax
policies and fewer government regulations.
There is no
gainsaying that these important differences were argurd in every modern presidential
race, but whichever candidate won, he understood that his opponents’ core
beliefs had to be accorded some respect. The power game had to be played by
rules devised for the broad center of American life.
Both parties
united in the vital area of foreign policy, guided by an unwritten consensus
that political differences did not extend to major international issues.
Communism was the number one enemy, with the totalitarian regimes in Moscow and
Peking subject to clear denunciations by both parties.
After the
disintegration of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin,
a former KGB agent, emerged as the new strongman determined to restore Russia
as a major world power. His political strength in the Kremlin has increased every
year since he took control in 1999.
Putin’s
biggest and most outrageous assertion of Russian power happened when his armies
invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The American president, Joseph Biden, condemned
this ignominious Russian conquest, and he vowed that America would lead the NATO
countries in supporting Ukrainian resistance to the forced annexation of their
country.
Former
President Donald Trump is the exception to this post-1945 feeling of
collegiality among United States presidents in foreign policy. During his time
in the White House from 2016 to 2020, he openly sided with the strongman
politics of Putin in Moscow and Xi in Peking. He still talks about America
leaving NATO and claims that when he takes over in Washington again, he will
propose a settlement of the crisis in Ukraine that Putin will quickly endorse.
During his
four years in the White House, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and General John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff, managed to steer
him away from most extreme actions until the insurrection in the Capitol on
January 7th. Both men have questioned his understanding of the constitutional
limitations of presidential power.
The core issue that separates him from all his
predecessors centers on his assertion that he won the 2020 presidential
election despite the official results, which show that Joseph Biden triumphed
by over seven million votes.
Republicans
questioned the official results and appealed them to more than fifty judges in
various jurisdictions. Every court adjudicated against the Republican claims.
All their talk about electoral corruption and polling chicanery was found to be
baseless.
However,
then President Trump continued to make preposterous claims that he didn’t lose
the election, that it was stolen. While
still in office, on January 7th, he called his hardline supporters
to protest the allegedly twisted results.
They were bombastic
and angry, and they attacked the Capitol Building carrying a mock hangman’s
noose for vice-president Mike Pence, who refused to go along with his boss’s
hair-brained scheme to count the polling results differently from the clear mandate
in the constitution.
Leaders of
both parties in the House and Senate condemned this treacherous behavior, and
even President Trump decried the wild actions of the rioters in his initial
response. Over a hundred of these insurrectionists have since faced the legal
consequences of their violent behavior, and many are still in jail.
During the
last three and a half years, we have seen the most amazing transformation in
American politics, at least since the Civil War a hundred and fifty years ago.
Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for the presidency again this
coming November, and he is running on the basis that he won the last time and
that President Biden is a usurper.
Even more
incomprehensible, nearly all the leaders of the Republican Party at national
and state levels are affirming his outrageous claim. They assert daily that Joe
Biden is an impostor in the White House because their man was cheated out of
retaining power in the 2020 election.
When asked
if he would accept the results of the official counts next November, Mr. Trump
said that he would if they met his definition of a fair election. His attitude
remains the same: heads I win, tails you lose.
Opinion
polls predict a close election. Most Republican voters have maintained a high
level of loyalty to their new leader. He has already assured the men who were
jailed as violent insurrectionists, now deemed heroes by Mr. Trump, that his
first action when he gets back to power will be to give them all a full pardon.
It is clear
that the center of American politics has given way, and if Trump triumphs in
November, we will face the dire consequences that will follow, including the
likely demise of constitutional democracy. Yeats’ powerful lines in his great
poem The Second Coming bemoaning the seeming breakdown of sensible,
inclusive democracy in Ireland a hundred years ago, apply in spades to the sad situation
in America today.
Things fall
apart; the center cannot hold,
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The best
lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full
of passionate intensity.
Gerry
OShea blogs at wemustbetalking.com
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