Trump was a stress test for the Constitution

Recent events remind me of something Abraham Lincoln said about mob rule:

“Whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this government cannot last.”

The Trump presidency will be known for many norm-breaking things, not the least of which is the voluminous ways in which it has stress-tested the American Constitution. The nicest thing I can say about the roller coaster of the past four years is that may prove to be a giant civics lesson.

Will the Constitution hold? Immediately after his inaugural, Trump’s “Muslim ban” executive order drew us to the constitutional directives on immigration and naturalization.

After a deranged madman with a rapid-fire weapon in Las Vegas took 60 lives in mere minutes, we debated whether those owning muskets intended to protect assault weapons in the Second Amendment.

The Georgia election in 2018 posed the question, do the 15th, 19th and 26th amendments on voting rights have real meaning if the wait to vote is six hours?

The president’s use of executive orders, particularly on DACA and the Affordable Care Act, and his advocacy of the “unified executive” theory of unrestricted presidential power has forced re-evaluation of the balance of powers as defined in the first three articles of the Constitution.

Early in his term, President Trump put the unrestricted breadth of the constitutional pardon on display with his pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and his recent pardon of his senior campaign team renewed it.

The first impeachment process asked the founders’ intent in the words “high crimes and misdemeanors” and ensued a debate over the Justice Department policy that a president is inherently constitutionally incapable of being prosecuted.

The 2020 fall election stimulated a crash course in the Electoral College, its fairness, the meaning of “faithless electors” and “alternative slates.”

So, it is altogether fitting — if tragically sad — that the final ethers of this president’s term have litigated the 25th Amendment, posed whether a self-pardon is constitutional, and whether a charge of insurrection, as addressed in Section 3 the 14th Amendment, would bar a future race for president.

Those who led last week’s bipartisan House impeachment vote are seeking precisely that result. And an unprecedented presidential self-pardon will likely assure impeachment in the Senate.

The Constitution was written as a response to a dictatorial King George. If it has a single dominant theme, it is the creation of tools for the people to protect against that reemergence. A president inciting violence against the U.S. Capitol

and our elected representatives to thwart a fair presidential election, is exactly — exactly — what the founders were most sought to protect against.

How utterly mindless for looters to perversely shout “USA, USA” while shredding our nation’s Capitol, threatening the lives of our elected leadership and thwarting fair elections? They said they came to take their country back. America’s people and resilience will prove they have it exactly backwards.

This week recalls for me the exchange that occurred as Ben Franklin left the Constitutional Convention: “Will we be a Republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin replied, “A Republic ma’am, if you can keep it.”

This is a moment of historic national reckoning. Americans must be clear: It is fealty to the enduring Constitution — not to this, or any one transient president — that makes our country great. And will again.