On the edge?
Idon’t know which metaphor to use to describe the current crisis in our politics because so many come to mind. Are we at a tipping point? The edge of a cliff? Or sitting on a volcano waiting for it to explode? You can choose one or all, because we are in a place we’ve never been before and it’s dangerous.
The problem didn’t start with the election of Donald Trump. Nor did it begin with the Democrats launching an impeachment inquiry against Trump. This is a developing crisis that has been growing like a cancer within our polity for at least the past 25 years. Its main symptoms are a lack of civility in our political discourse, a “take no prisoners” mindset, and a denial of the very legitimacy of “the other side.” Trump didn’t create this crisis; he was the result of it.
When Newt Gingrich took the helm of Congress in 1995, unlike previous Republican leaders, he embarked on a campaign not only to obstruct the efforts of then President Clinton, but to destroy him. Congress launched a series of investigations accusing Clinton of everything from corruption to obstruction of justice – with hints of even more nefarious plots to assassinate those who might pose a problem to his presidency.
They finally settled on Clinton’s lying about an embarrassing sexual dalliance as the grounds for impeachment. What was most notable about this entire sordid affair was the total contempt demonstrated by this new breed of Republicans for Clinton. It wasn’t political. It was personal. They weren’t out to defeat his proposed legislation. They didn’t see him as a legitimate president and sought to destroy him.
Later, during the months’ long standoff that accompanied the 2000 election, culminating in the Supreme Court decision that George Bush should was the winner, my brother John Zogby conducted poll in which he asked Democratic and Republican voters whether or not, should the other side win, would they feel that new president be considered a “legitimate president.”
The results were disturbing; despite the fact that Al Gore had won the popular vote and the outcome was still being decided, a significant majority of Republicans said they would not accept Gore as a legitimate president. A majority of Democrats, on the other hand, said that should Bush be declared the winner, they would respect the outcome.
Bush, unlike Clinton, did not face retribution from the Democratic controlled Senate. They passed his tax cuts, compromised on a series of domestic initiatives, and rallied behind him after 9/11, giving him the authorization to make war and unprecedented powers of intrusive domestic surveillance. It wasn’t Democrats who sunk Bush’s presidency, it was his failed war in Iraq, his disastrous mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 economic collapse.
Within weeks of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Republicans stepped up efforts to obstruct and delegitimize his presidency. The GOP’s minority leadership in the House and Senate boldly declared that their intention was not to work with him but “to bring him down” by funding outside and organizing outside groups, like the Tea Party and the “birther movement.”
Never before had leaders in one major party been engaged in such a campaign to question whether the president was even a legal US citizen. And their efforts took a toll. In polling conducted back then, well over 60 percent of Republicans stated that they believed the Obama was not born in the US - and therefore was not a legitimate president (the same number also said they believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim, therefore lying about being a Christian).
While Obama’s presidency was above reproach in that he was never charged with any wrongdoing. His first Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was hounded by Republican Congressional committees who accusing her of concealing and deleting her private email account hide it from investigators. She was subjected to hours of interrogated by Congressmen who charged that she failed to protect the US Ambassador to Libya, contributing to his death.
While one might say that the email inquiry was a legitimate concern – despite the fact that several of Clinton’s predecessors also had such personal accounts – the contempt Congress demonstrated in charging her with contributing to the death of the Ambassador was clearly an effort to harass, humiliate, and degrade her service.
This lack of respect and civility brought us to the 2016 presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump. During the primary, Trump demeaned his opponents, railed against the media, insulted the courts, preyed on xenophobic fears, and incited his supporters to use violence against protesters.
His behavior was so outrageous that pundits declared him to be “unpresidential” and unelectable. They failed to recognize that the political well had been so poisoned that what they found unacceptable was well received by many Republican voters were fed a steady diet of incivility and contempt for “the other” over two decades. The beast spawned by the GOP in the 1990s had come of age and was now devouring them.
NOTE: Dr James J Zogby is the President of the Arab American Institute