I have always loved our country and our government, our grand democratic experiment, ever since I was old enough to understand the meaning of the words “We the People” as a boy in the heartland of Iowa. My love for our government was sorely tested in the 1960s and 70s during the Vietnam War when I found myself on the wrong side of many social and political norms, but on the right side of history. My love for our country after that painful period was soundly reaffirmed on trips across the country where real people (not politicians) showed me their American values of acceptance, compassion, and the ability to respect others even if they disagreed with them. I thought it was a time when America was “great” for many reasons.
The resolution of the Watergate crisis, in which criminal behavior at the highest levels was confronted and redressed through a bipartisan belief in the rule of law, allowed me to believe that our system was, in some ways, bulletproof. Our Constitution and our elected representatives provided protection if any person or branch of government acted illegally or unethically. But since the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, I have been forced to face a disturbing fact: many of my beliefs about our Constitutional government are illusions.
I thought the constitutional process for selecting a Supreme Court Justice was rock-solid and unshakeable: a president nominated a jurist and Senate approval required a super-majority of two-thirds. But the letter of the constitutional law does not specify when the process must start, and Senate Republicans used this loophole to avoid voting on President Obama’s nominee of 2016.
It also turns out my belief in the two-thirds vote for approval was an illusion. Republican Senators changed centuries of tradition using the “nuclear option” to slide around opposition with only a simple majority in 2017. This “nuclear option” may turn out to be a “weapon of mass destruction,” vaporizing some Constitutional traditions for years to come.
I also believed that the Constitution prohibited a president from economically benefiting from foreign gifts and proposing actions that knowingly provided personal and direct economic gain. So far, President Trump has merely disregarded the “emoluments” clause of the Constitution and broken with recent tradition by keeping his tax returns private. Today, our government may put the president’s fortune at a higher priority than democratic or ethical principles.
Trump has made his political career by disregarding and disdaining tradition. In the White House, a list of his nontraditional actions goes on and on: embracing brutal dictators; reducing debate to juvenile name-calling; questioning the legitimacy of the court systems; making false statements without proof; ignoring inconvenient facts; etc., etc., etc.
But one of the most harmful trends that Trump has led is destroying the tradition that government and presidential actions are taken for specific, explainable, and consistent reasons. According to Trump’s most recent interview, he fired the head of the FBI (only the second firing in the agency’s history) because he was “a showboat” and “a grandstander” and continued to investigate the Trump campaign. This explanation directly contradicts previously-stated reasons of mishandled investigations. Trump blatantly states that it was his own personal feeling that drove the decision; he was “always going to fire him.” Our president governs by whim, emotion, and naked self-interest; it is the method he used as a private business owner and on fake-reality TV, and is the same as that used by autocrats and dictators who don’t need to explain or be accountable for their actions.
The controlling Republicans in the House of Representatives have followed this lead. They passed a health care bill simply because they wanted to say they did, not for rational or explainable reasons. They passed their second attempt because Pres. Trump wanted them to, so they could deliver a “win.” They took actions which involve billions of dollars and affect the health of millions of people without following basic democratic traditions: they held no hearings to discuss the specifics of the bill and did not allow time for the Congressional Budget Office to assess its effects. The appearance of action for President Trump and the House was much more important than how those actions affected the American people, both supporters and detractors.
So if constitutional law and democratic traditions don’t protect us from a government that is unrecognizable to many and may be dangerous to American institutions and people, what will?
I will never forget the spiritual and moral force exemplified in Republican Senator Howard Baker, Democratic Senator Sam Ervin, and Justice John Sirica during the Watergate crisis. They stood in the face of great opposition in the White House, which had a long history of retribution against opponents. With their leadership, as well as the courageous actions of Nixon foot soldiers like John Dean, the country was saved from a slide towards a criminal and unethical leadership. They were also supported by the power of “We the People” as seen in massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War and a wide variety of other government actions.
Currently, I hope the streets remain packed with people who respectfully and nonviolently oppose government actions. I believe all of us need to work extra hard at respecting those who deserve it through their words and actions, regardless of their political beliefs.
Nationally, I can only hope for strong Republican and Democratic representatives and senators and impartial judges to stand against the chaos gleefully instigated by our president and his advisors. Even if Trump were removed, I have little faith that the policies pushed ahead by the small group of billionaires now in power will be more to my liking, but at least I could believe in the process and hope for the continuity of a government system I love and respect. It would be a step towards making America great again.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer living in Greenfield. Comments welcome at www.theswordandscabbard.com or awoods2846@gmail.com.