The Enablers, The Rubber Stamps... The Violence They Are Doing To Our Constitutional Democracy

Best People by Chip Proser

Jonathan Freedland, in last week's New York Review of Books took a step away from his usual role of defending all things American. Trump has changed all that-- and probably for many more avid fans of America than Freedland. "We’ve seen hideous U.S. presidencies before," he wrote, "but what is happening under Trump goes further. The travel ban on Muslims and the separation of migrant children from their parents are disgusting in themselves, but they point to something larger than the ugly policy decisions of a specific administration that will, eventually, be gone. They suggest a fundamental weakness in the U.S, system itself. The flaw is that... the American system does, after all, allow for unified, centralized, and unchecked government with, at its apex, an executive authority, the president, able to exercise untrammeled power... So no one can claim to be surprised by a President Trump who, to give just three examples, refuses to divest himself of business interests affected by his conduct of U.S. foreign policy, appoints unqualified family members to senior posts, and demands the jailing of his political opponents. But they can justifiably be surprised by the failure of US institutions to restrain him on even one of those counts."

It now seems plausible that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could reveal the most damning case possible against Trump, there’d be a lot of noise for a few days, then some new outrage would explode for the media to talk about-- and Trump would stay comfortably in his post. When Trump joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his backers would stick with him anyway, he was referring to his most loyal voters. Now we have good grounds to suspect that the same would be true of the supposedly co-equal branches of government, those whose duty is to resist such barbarism.

In other words, what the Trump presidency has confirmed is something I overlooked in 1998: that the Constitution may boast endlessly ingenious powers, but they count for nothing if the men and women charged with deploying those powers refuse to do their duty.

A similar oversight of mine relates to norms. Two decades ago, I loudly admired the American penchant for writing things down rather than relying on nebulous, unwritten conventions (which is the British way). U.S. citizens could point to their liberties and protections spelled out in black and white in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, while Britons relied on a haze of custom, interpreted by a select priesthood of experts, usually lawyers, scholars, or superannuated politicians, called upon to explain to the public the invisible rules of the game.

And yet, I see now that the U.S., too, has relied on a raft of norms and taboos to secure its liberal democracy. It might be the demand that candidates release their tax returns, or the parliamentary etiquette that used to insist that a president’s nominee for the Supreme Court at least get a hearing, but those customs have been shattered by a Republican Party willing to smash every convention that stands in its way. Today’s Republican Party, like its president, is utterly unfettered by the constraining power of shame. The result is that conventions once deemed immovable have been exposed as far weaker than we understood--cnot worth the paper they weren’t written on.

Mitch McConnell is the least admired, least popular and most disliked politician in America. You thought it was Nancy Pelosi? Nope. Pelosi is viewed favorably by 29% of Americans-- pretty poor, but largely manipulated in a concerted campaign by the GOP and their media allies. McConnell? 24%-- and almost entirely of his own making. He is, after all, the personification of what Freedland referred to as a "Republican Party willing to smash every convention that stands in its way... [and] like its president, utterly unfettered by the constraining power of shame." Thanks, Mitch. He's dragged American into the shitter with him and in November, American voters will give their judgment on that Republican Party. Alas, it almost doesn't matter who-- what kind of crap-- the Democrats nominate. Voters don't care. You won't find worse politicians than Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ), two easily bribable Blue Dogs, both of whom are almost sure to win their November races. That kind of stoopid is likely to lead to an undoing of the Democratic Party in the next midterm, 2022. But... that ship has largely sailed. Thank God there will be new members elected in November like Randy Bryce, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kara Eastman and others who can make common group with reformers like Ro Khanna, Jamie Raskin, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal and other reformers already in Congress. But, it really is the establishment power structure-- both parties-- that will need to be torn down. Ocasio took down Joe Crowley, the self-styled "next Speaker," and Bryce took down the current dreadful Speaker, Paul Ryan, who retired from the field of battle rather than be defeated by an iron worker.