When the chaos president flips to ‘law and order’
The year 1968 is regarded by many historians as the most explosive year in modern U.S. history. But will this year — 2020 — exceed it?
Is a dark, new chapter in the American journey about to begin? Or, as I would argue, are we witnessing the dying gasps of a tinpot tyrant who frantically sees his reality show finally coming to an end?
It takes no great insight on Donald Trump’s part to realize that, once he is no longer president, which is likely as early as next January, he will be liable to prosecution and jail for a multitude of potential crimes.
Given this, the events of the past week certainly provide Americans with no reason for complacency. Desperate and afraid, Trump is out of options — and that itself provides a clear and present danger to U.S. democracy.
Failing abysmally in his handling of the pandemic, the looming economic depression and a sudden racial crisis, we can all see what he is doing.
Trump is trying mightily to push the instruments of government closer to authoritarian rule in a final effort to grasp on to power.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the turmoil currently ripping at the core of American society is being triggered by a man whose political hero is Richard Nixon — that same Nixon who was forced to resign in 1974 for abuse of power.
And it is Nixon’s original “law and order” playbook — which led to his first election as president in 1968 — that Trump is using as he seeks his own re-election this November.
But there are important lessons from the U.S. history of 1968 that suggest that Trump won’t succeed in replaying the Nixon playbook.
This was the year when America’s crucial fault lines — the battle over civil
rights, the disastrous Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the youth revolution and more — exploded seemingly at once. The aftershocks both in the U.S. and the world at large reverberated for decades afterward.
But 1968 was also a year that carried with it the accumulated burden of a decade of crisis.
Beginning with the shock of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, these were years of spreading race riots in major U.S. cities, a violent counterreaction by police and security forces, the growing despair of the Vietnam War and the collapsing presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who was being challenged from within his own Democratic Party.
It was in this fraught environment that Richard Nixon, Republican challenger, ran against the incumbent Democrats in the 1968 presidential election, and won.
But Nixon, who promised to restore law and order at home and peace abroad, ran as the challenger seeking the White House, not — like Trump — as president.
In 1968, the majority of Americans wanted to rid the White House of Democrats, and that is why they elected Nixon. But they were motivated by more than ideology. A major reason was exhaustion.
They were tired of years of upheaval that tore their society apart. They wanted normalcy, and stability.
It is this moment in 1968 that may provide the most insight about the 2020 election.
And it prompts this question: After the past four years of chaos and upheaval, which candidate — Trump or Joe Biden — can credibly promise stability?
A highly regarded history of the 1960s, written in 1971, may provide an answer.
In his book, “Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s,” the late William O’Neill described the overwhelming mood of exhaustion on the part of American voters in 1968:
“Nations, like men, cannot live off their nervous energy indefinitely. Times of great tension and stress give way to calmer periods. Change does not stop even though men tire of it, yet the forms it takes alter. People can bear to address profound — therefore stormy and divisive — problems for only so long. When the time is up, regardless of what has been accomplished, private matters reassert their authority. Sometimes the corner is turned in a single year.”
And there are other reasons to believe that Trump’s reign will soon be coming to an end.
Trump’s polling numbers are falling, even among important elements of his fabled base.
As much as he portrays the protesters in the streets as “left-wing anarchists,” the opposite is proving true. They have been overwhelmingly diverse — and peaceful — and recent polls indicate that twothirds of Americans support them.
Trump is under increasing attack from quarters that have, until now, been notably mute, such as former defence secretary James Mattis, who said this week that the president was “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people … Instead, he tries to divide us.”
As this week unfolded, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden became far more visible in the debate.
He apparently realizes that the growing sense of crisis now confronting the U.S. has placed a spotlight on the key issues that will dominate his presidency if he is elected in November.
They include the fallout from a collapsing economy, the urgent need for adequate health care, the cry for racial justice, and the damage from Trump’s policies that have seriously worsened income inequality and the climate crisis.
Increasingly, polls suggest that Americans believe Biden is far better suited to deal with these problems than the incumbent.
So — assuming, of course, that Americans can keep Trump’s storm troopers off the streets between now and the inauguration of a new president in January — there may be life after Trump.
Tony Burman, formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributing foreign affairs columnist for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyBurman