It’s not ‘inappropriate’ to criticize the president
Constitution protects our right to do so
As of Monday, we are living in a brave new world where it’s “extremely inappropriate” to criticize the president of the United States.
That is the high crime and misdemeanor the White House press secretary cited in putting several top former officials from previous administrations on notice that they might be losing their security clearances.
“Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders intoned repeatedly at Monday’s press briefing, clearly reading from a pre-approved script.
Never mind the hypocrisy of this coming from the administration of President Donald Trump, who spent years spreading false innuendo that the last president was not born in the United States and, therefore, not able to hold his high office.
Or the fact that two of the people Trump is threatening to punish, James Clapper and Michael Hayden, earned their security clearances by performing the sort of military service for their country that the president managed to avoid.
The real issue here is Americans’ right to criticize their chief executive — a right that was fundamental to the establishment of the Constitution.
When they were trying to build support for that document, the Founding Fathers went out of their way to emphasize the differences between the office of the president and that of the king that Americans had just shucked off.
In Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton wrote that while the king of Great Britain is a “HEREDITARY monarch … sacred and inviolable,” the president would hold a four-year term of office, eligible for re-election “as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence.”
Unlike a king, Hamilton added, a president would be liable “to personal punishment and disgrace.”
In a democracy, removing a public official means being able to persuade your fellow citizens to go along. That’s why the Supreme Court, in deciding the
1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, gave special protection to the right to criticize people in power. This case is the reason a Barack Obama libel suit never would have stood a chance, even after Trump repeatedly made false claims about the then-president’s birthplace.
“In my view, the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution afford to the citizen and to the press an absolute, unconditional privilege to criticize official conduct despite the harm which may flow from excesses and abuses,” Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote in concurring with the landmark ruling. “In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized.”
The United States has a proud tradition of protecting dissent as a check on power. In Federalist 67, Hamilton noted that supporters of the proposed presidency had to overcome “the aversion of the people to monarchy.”
Trump was clearly feeling that aversion as a raucously critical candidate in
2016. But how is he feeling now? And more important, how about his fellow citizens?