U.S. will need time to recover from outrage of the assault on Capitol
“I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.” — U.S. President Donald Trump to his supporters, Jan. 5. Ouch!
When scholars put this month’s astonishing events in Washington —“a cascade of crises,” as the New York Times describes them — into historical context, they may reach back to the four-month period between Franklin Roosevelt’s election and his swearing-in on March 4, 1933.
The world was in chaos then, on a path that would lead to the Second World War. The Great Depression had nations in its relentless grip. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis took over Germany. Japan left the League of Nations. Hundreds of banks had failed in the United States, forcing 38 states to declare “bank holidays.” Racial tension was on the rise, as lynchings of Blacks in the South quadrupled (from six in 1932 to 24 in 1933). “The country, numb and nearly broken, anxiously awaited deliverance,” historian David Kennedy wrote in “Freedom from Fear,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the era.
Although 2021 won’t replicate 1933, the country has cause to feel numb and to be anxiously awaiting deliverance. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines offers deliverance from the still-raging pandemic, which had claimed more than 372,000 American lives as of Saturday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But deliverance from political chaos — burned into American consciousness by the storming and ransacking of the Capitol by a mob of thugs, criminals, thrill-seekers and right-wing extremists — will not come easily or, it appears, soon.
Efforts to remove Trump from office come far too late. The Democrats wanted to invoke the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to declare him unfit and remove him from office. That was a non-starter. It would have had to be initiated by Vice-president Mike Pence with the support of a majority of Trump’s cabinet, and Pence was not going there.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, now says Trump must resign or be impeached. It’s an empty threat. The House has already tried that. Pelosi has enough votes for another motion to impeach. But it will require a two-thirds of members present in the Senate to convict and remove the president. There is no way enough Republican senators will join the Democrats to let that happen. The remaining recourse would be censure. Either chamber could pass a motion of censure, but such motions have no legal effect. Censure is a reprimand, a rap on the knuckles, and Trump would simply ignore it.
As of this morning, he has nine full days and half of a 10th before Joe Biden is sworn in at noon on Jan. 20. Anything could happen in that time — anything from peaceful demonstrations to rioting and mayhem on the scale of the last week’s. Chances are Trump fanatics, emboldened by attention they gained last week and encouraged by his declaration that “our incredible journey is only just beginning,” will take to the streets again.
On Thursday, tweeting through his deputy chief of staff, Trump said there will be an “orderly transition” on the 20th. Given his sustained and impressive record as a presidential liar, few people in Washington (or anywhere else) will believe him. His announcement on Friday that he will not attend the inauguration sends a signal to his followers that he still does not accept Biden’s election as being legitimate.
To return to historian Kennedy, the awaited deliverance will arrive, eventually. Trump is bound to fade away. But first he might go after the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Or he might, as some Washington insiders anticipate, promote his daughter Ivanka for a Florida seat in the U.S. Senate.
American democracy, though disrespected in the Trump years, remains fundamentally sound. In Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the nation will have a president and vice-president who understand and respect the democratic system. And thanks to Democratic wins in the two special Senate elections in Georgia, they have control, albeit tenuous, of both houses of Congress. Deliverance is in sight if not yet in hand.
Trump’s announcement that he will not attend the inauguration sends a signal to his followers that he still does not accept Biden’s election as being legitimate.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, retired this month from teaching political science at the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com