De souza
Many americans do not believe in the integrity of their democratic institutions.
One of the more tedious aspects of American presidential inaugurations is the customary wall-to-wall commentary about how the “peaceful transfer of power” is a unique feature of the united States, as if it is not routinely done by others. Indeed, the Westminster model manages to dispose of the whole affair in a matter of days, not months, with nothing more required than dropping in on the Queen or governor general.
As recently as december, President-elect Joe Biden was speaking about America’s democratic system as “messy” and “requiring patience,” but still being the “envy of the world.” He doesn’t quite speak so extravagantly as of late. This latter day modicum of humility is as welcome as it is novel.
The more pertinent question as Biden takes the oath of office is whether America’s democratic institutions are the envy of Americans. President donald Trump’s unique megaphone — built over decades in the world of celebrity — had a great distorting effect, which often caused his critics and enemies to overlook the message in their distaste for the messenger.
For example, the last person before Trump who claimed widespread electoral irregularities in a state-wide election in Georgia was Stacey Abrams, the democratic candidate for governor who refused to concede the 2018 election. She is currently the great liberal heroine who’s widely credited with turning Georgia blue in 2020.
Charges of electoral corruption are nothing new. Indeed, such allegations tend in the united States to come more from the left than the right. So long is the tradition of suspicious elections that there is high praise for the aggrieved who accept their lot — richard Nixon in 1960, Al Gore in 2000. Trump did not accept his lot, did not play the part of the gracious loser and therefore upended a key part of American democracy, namely upholding the pretence that elections are fair.
Consider that in four of the past 16 presidential elections, the losing side has believed that the victor was somehow illegitimate: that John F. Kennedy stole the election from richard Nixon is a credible view even among his supporters; a wide majority of democrats believe that a partisan Supreme Court intervened to deliver the 2000 election to
George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton has frankly said that Trump’s win in 2016 was “illegitimate;” and Trump has preferred to blow up the system rather than concede.
The difference with Trump is, well, Trump. Onto the embers of disenchantment he pours gasoline. But the slow burn was there long before. Large numbers of Americans do not believe in the integrity of their democratic institutions. What is new is the willingness to express that disenchantment in political violence.
There is an analogy here to another pillar of democratic governance, the fairness of the criminal justice system. Any careful observer of American criminal justice has seen the politicized rot for
decades upon decades. One reason JFK installed his brother robert F. Kennedy as attorney general was because he feared J. edgar Hoover, the FBI director who used his fearsome police powers for his own agenda and aggrandizement.
That was only one of the more spectacular abuses of power, as opposed to the workaday abuses that result in 97 per cent conviction rates and a mass incarceration policy that imprisons more people than totalitarian regimes. As a consequence, on occasion — most recently last summer — large numbers who have lost their trust in the fairness of the justice system turn to mass protest, sometimes including violence and riots.
America arrives at this inauguration with perhaps a quarter of its population believing that its elections are corrupt and its criminal justice system is not fair. Those are long-term trends that predate the current figures on the scene. And the problem is getting worse, not better, exacerbated by the current figures on the scene.
As Joe Biden delivers his inaugural address, he will look out upon the capital city’s great public space, the Washington Mall, completely empty, declared off-limits, protected by roadblocks and security fences, guarded by some 25,000 heavily armed troops. The great monuments — Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson — will appear as tombstones in a vast, vacant cemetery of democratic culture.
A political culture in which the people are kept at great distance from their leaders by the military is not democratic. The authorities will likely congratulate themselves for an overwhelming security response — more troops deployed in Washington than in Afghanistan and Iraq combined! It’s not martial law, but actual martial law would look awfully similar.
George Washington, in the first inaugural address, claimed that, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
In 2021, those hands are unsteady, their grasp precarious. America did well, more or less, in keeping that experiment in working order. If that experiment is in better shape elsewhere today, gratitude for the American experience is appropriate, as well as sadness for its decline.
ACTUAL MARTIAL LAW WOULD LOOK AWFULLY SIMILAR.