Checks and balances under fire
And no one appears willing to take action despite the greatest threat to democracy in America since Watergate
WASHINGTON— There’s a house on fire, flames shooting every which way. And the fire department has decided to sit around and scoff at the people waving their arms and asking them to do something.
Every American schoolkid learns that their government has a system of checks and balances that keeps a wayward president from taking a torch to the federal government. An astonishing week in Washington shows that it only works if the people involved don’t have a self-interested reason to check out.
By any objective standard, President Donald Trump’s acts and words over the last five days have undermined America’s commitment to the rule of law, to the independence of federal law enforcement, and to basic norms of honesty from public officials. If not yet a constitutional crisis, Trump has sparked crises of credibility and legitimacy, perhaps the country’s gravest democratic test since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.
He is also safe from repercussions, at least for now.
Republicans are in control of Congress. And they have no desire to do anything to hurt the president still beloved by the voters who also vote for them.
After Trump fired FBI director James Comey on Tuesday, numerous Republicans pronounced themselves “troubled” or some variation of the same. After Trump had another Twitter meltdown on Friday, in which he threatened Comey by suggesting he had secretly taped their White House conversations, members of the congressional leadership grumbled anonymously to the website Axios that the madness “has to stop.”
But they appeared unprepared to take any actual action. Fantasizing about a House impeachment? For the time being, Republicans won’t even call in an independent lawyer. Congressional leaders brushed aside calls from Democrats, and others, for a special counsel to investigate the relationship between Trump’s campaign and Russian meddling in the election.
Their operative philosophy was expressed by Sen. Chuck Grassley: “Suck it up and move on.”
They were, as always, backed up by a Fox News-Breitbart-Drudge obfuscation axis, a media machine that treats every Trump fiasco as an excuse to scrutinize liberals for any hint of hypocrisy and the mainstream media for any hint of bias. The day after Trump admitted on television that Russia was on his mind when he made the firing deci- sion, Fox was still suggesting that Democrats were inventing conspiracy theories.
Even Fox’s own digital politics editor felt compelled to issue a plea for perspective.
“This is deadly serious stuff. And many of the president’s supporters seem either unaware or unwilling to confront the situation as it exists,” Chris Stirewalt wrote. “Just because one thinks that Democrats are hysterical in their responses to Trump does not mean that Trump is doing the right things.”
Trump-era news cycles are measured in minutes, not 24-hour days, and the firing will inevitably fade from headlines after Trump does something unrelatedly outrageous. Yet Trump’s behaviour in the aftermath of the firing made Grassley’s advice seem especially irresponsible. To recap, here is what Trump did even before he decided on Thursday to invite questions about whether he was recording his Oval Office guests without their knowledge.
He ousted the FBI director who was investigating whether his campaign associates colluded with the Russian interference. He falsely claimed he had only done so at the recommendation of a respected deputy attorney general.
Then, in the same breezy tone he used to brag about the size of his election victory, he said that Russia was on his mind when he made the decision – an admission that any other politician might only have surrendered if tricked on a witness stand or subpoena-forced to hand over private documents.
As usual, the nonchalance of his self-incrimination may have made the remark appear like less of a significant revelation than it was, allowing him to escape scrutiny on the strength of sheer chutzpah. Still, his flagrant dishonesty about why he had acted turned a rule-of-law debacle into a credibility debacle that may damage his ability to deal with a future crisis not of his own making.
Trump’s own reputation for honesty was already shot. When his team wants to reassure people that it really means something, it sometimes dispatches Vice-President Mike Pence. But Pence, too, offered a wholly inaccurate rationale for the firing. So did Trump’s three principal spokespeople.
“They have lost all credibility, which could be crucial in the future,” said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. If they were to announce that Iran had begun violating the nuclear agreement, he said, “would anyone believe them?”
Goldenberg, formerly of the State Department, said the turmoil will itself cause harm. Preoccupied with self-inflicted wounds, he said, the administration is not spending enough time equipping itself to handle global issues.
“When that crisis comes, and it inevitably will, they will likely be wholly unprepared for a number of reasons,” he said.
Philip Crowley, an assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, said the week shows an administration operating in a mode of “functional chaos.”
“I don’t think the decision itself is harmful in terms of foreign policy, but it reinforces a broad perception that his administration is still dysfunctional,” Crowley said. “No one knows if something said today will have the same meaning tomorrow. That is a problem if it is not corrected soon.”
Republican recalcitrance and all, the Russia questions do not appear to be vanishing as fast as Paul Ryan and company would like them to. For now the FBI appears determined to conduct the investigation without favour. Bipartisan investigations continue. And whether out of ego, guilt or sheer foolishness, Trump himself seems unable to stop talking about the whole thing.
Peter Feaver, a Duke University political science professor who served on George W. Bush’s national security council, said he thinks the matter will eventually be handed over to an independent commission.
“Because, without that commission, this is going to suck the life out of the Congress,” Feaver said.
Trump opponents can only hope.