I have to write about Donald Trump, simply because I can’t get away from him. The tipping point came when he was the focus of every cartoon in a recent week’s New Yorker. It feels like he is everywhere at once, filling our news and discussions with worries and exultations: His Hair! His Hands! His Wall! His Wealth and Greatness! His Insults and Threats! Is he a murderous knife or a dose of poison for the GOP?
Attention to Trump has created a fog around other issues. We can’t look away from what may be a train wreck or victory march, but a more serious problem is hiding in the mist. We are near a Constitutional crisis that may finally push our democracy into a type of terminal quicksand. We are faced with elected leaders who brazenly choose party politics over Constitutional mandates. Senators are proudly ignoring their sworn duties.
In researching my recent historical fiction novel, I confirmed some suspicions: pre-Revolutionary politics was not a game of bean bag. Dirty tricks, including threats, intimidation and violent assaults, were all part of an unfettered political struggle. The Sons of Liberty repeatedly attacked a newspaper editor who dared to publish inconvenient truths. A mob ransacking a Tory’s mansion was a sanctioned way to send a message to the lords in London.
But once our beloved Constitution was hammered into place, it became the ultimate conscience and direction for both elected and military leaders. Elected officials engage in the ugly process of making sausage most of the time, but the Constitution and its clearly delineated responsibilities have occasionally offered a way to clean their hands.
Article II makes the president commander in chief. Army commanders from Reconstruction to Korea and beyond have followed unpopular orders because the Constitution required it. Personal politics were subservient to our hallowed document. Our peaceful elections and transfer of power as specified in the Constitution are one reason millions of immigrants have risked their lives to become Americans.
When President Nixon tried to subvert the Constitution’s balance of power, even his Republican supporters rebelled. It was one of our democracy’s proudest days when Republican Senator Howard Baker pushed the Watergate investigation forward. The Senator’s belief in the Constitution and the rule of law “trumped” his party politics.
Article II also specifies that the President will appoint Supreme Court Justices “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” This has become a contentious process since the first formal hearings in 1925. In 1987, Robert Bork complained that Democratic Senators were using a “most unfair characterization of my views.” In 1991, Clarence Thomas charged them with conducting a “high-tech lynching.” But the hearings and their results have all been a part of the messy process of public, Constitutional democracy. Senators were allowed (or forced) to put their views on the record for all to see and let the Constitutional process of Senate voting determine the outcome.
Republican senators have now pledged to block this process. Their suggestion that “voters should weigh in” on the nominee is one that has never been heard before, probably because it has no Constitutional basis.
This problem should lift the Fog of Trump, at least temporarily, because it blatantly proposes that the Constitution is no longer relevant in modern politics. It is similar to presidential legal adviser John Yoo deciding the Geneva Conventions were “quaint” in 2002. Those two historic documents were created through years of negotiations and survived decades of challenges. Both have been hailed as triumphs of civilization. But the final rules for soldiers and Senators are now being thrown out the window. The end justifies the means in war and in the Senate. Without the checks and balances of the Constitution, maintaining political power is all that matters.
The Senate Republicans’ position firmly establishes our worst fears: Elected officials no longer need to worry about their oath to the Constitution if it interferes with their party’s agenda. I hope Americans and their elected leaders can see through the Fog of Trump to recognize the Constitutional crisis in front of us. Let democracy play out. If an Obama nominee wins or loses, it will be far preferable to the Senate subverting the Constitution by refusing its sworn duty to provide advice and consent.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer living in Greenfield. Comments are welcome at his book’s web site, www.theswordandscabbard.com or by email: awoods2846@gmail.com