Damage to democracy will be Trump’s damning legacy
In a radio interview last week, Donald Trump said that “the saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing ...”
Trump then asked, referring to the Justice Department and FBI, “Why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her dossier ...?”
In a series of tweets the next morning, Trump called on the Justice Department and the FBI to “do what is right and proper” by launching criminal probes of Clinton.
Trump’s obvious aim was to deflect attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of his campaign, and of the indictments issued against his former campaign aides. But by calling on the Justice Department to investigate Clinton, and by lamenting that he cannot do “the kind of things I would love to be doing,” Trump crossed a particularly dangerous line.
In a democracy bound by the rule of law, presidents do not prosecute their political opponents. Nor, until now, have they tried to stir up public anger toward former opponents.
Our democratic system of government depends on presidents putting that system above their own partisan aims.
As Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, once an election is over, candidates’ graciousness to one another is an important demonstration of their commitment to the democratic system over the specific outcomes they fought to achieve
Think of Al Gore’s concession speech to George W. Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and a day after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Bush. “I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country.”
Bush’s response to Gore was no less gracious.
“Vice President Gore and I put our hearts and hopes into our campaigns; we both gave it our all,” Bush said. “We shared similar emotions. I understand how difficult this moment must be for Vice President Gore and his family. He has a distinguished record of service to our country as a congressman, a senator and a vice president.”
Many voters continued to doubt the legitimacy of Bush’s victory, but there was no social unrest, no civil war. Americans didn’t retreat into warring tribes.
Think of what might have occurred if Gore had bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently or Bush had vowed to put Gore in jail for various improprieties, and then, after he won, called on the FBI to launch a criminal probe of Gore. Such statements, close to ones Trump has actually made, might have imperiled the nation’s political stability.
Donald Trump has no such concern.
This is the essence of Trump’s failure as president — not that he has chosen one set of policies over another, or that he has lied repeatedly or even that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways.
It is that he has sacrificed the institutions of American democracy to his own selfish ends.
Trump has abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.
This will be his most damaging and most damning legacy.