The Honor of Our Country Is in Danger

The ghosts of Washington and Lincoln stand watch over the presidential chair that James G. Blaine is attempting to approach.

Given the dire politics of today, the notion that the United States is undergoing a steep and irreversible decline is easy to entertain. The lifespan of republics being notoriously short, and the signs of decay being abundant, American prospects are suddenly, unexpectedly bleak. The nation that’s risen to such heights, that’s given its people so much, now seems destined to decline and fall. The conflict between the parties has been going on for so long, and the tone of public life is so low, and the bad people among us so bold and numerous, that many of us have reluctantly given up the nation for lost.

We have resisted and objected to each new outrage, each new manifestation of mendacity and corruption, but with such mixed results and with such persistence of myriad malignant forces that many of us are demoralized and exhausted.

Americans who have fought for years to marginalize Trump and keep good people in power have yet to score a decisive victory. Even now, two years after American voters defeated Trump at the polls, they cannot yet rejoice. It’s still too soon to rejoice, too soon to say that the federal system is safe.

Take heart. Americans have seen their nation deteriorating before. To be honest, much of US history consists of backsliding times, when wholesome pride in this glorious nation, and righteous service to it, has been nearly snuffed out, thanks to the wily machinations of low-lifes and thieves.

Even in times of peace and prosperity, the United States has suffered setbacks and indignities, as corrupt and self-seeking charlatans (such as James G. Blaine, depicted above) have tried to rise, aiming to monopolize a great system of government they can only disgrace.

Long is the fight, but good Americans are too stalwart to cede victory to the dark forces still pressing in.

 

Image:
Bernhard Gillam, “The Honor of the Country in Danger,”
published in
Puck magazine 29 October 1884,
 from this source.


IMAGE NOTE: In this masterful 1884 political cartoon by Bernhard Gillam, the ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand watch over a presidential chair that the unworthy James G. Blaine aspires to.  As the United States approached the centenary of its Founding in 1889, would the century that began with George Washington as president end in disgrace with the likes of Blaine?  (Opponents dubbed Senator Blaine, “the Continental Liar from the State of Maine.”)

In the 1884 election, Democrats sought to rout a Republican party that, since its glory days in the Civil War (1861-1865), had grown disreputable and corrupt.  The Republican Party’s rise to power in the 1850s on the strength of its principled opposition to slavery, coupled with its noble defense of the Union and victory over the rebel proslavery states, issued in an enduring political monopoly.  Beginning with Lincoln’s election in 1860, Republicans controlled the White House for twenty-four years.  The Democratic Party, having been tolerant of slavery before the war, was tainted and nationally anathema for all this time. 

During Reconstruction (1865-1876), Republican control of the federal government guaranteed that former slaveholders would not regain power and undo all that the Civil War had so painfully accomplished.  Excessive power in the hands on one party, however, allowed political mendacity and corruption to flourish.  In addition, support gradually waned for the monopolistic use of federal power (including military power) to protect minority rights in Southern states.  Open-ended coercion violated the principles of self-government and reserved state powers on which the Constitution is based.

In 1876, these contradictions and other, more ignoble considerations led the Republicans to abandon the Reconstruction policies that had kept the former Confederate states from reverting to the status quo ante bellum. Thereafter, commercial prosperity replaced racial equality as the Republican Party’s top priority. The Grand Old Party’s degenerate condition became unmistakably evident in 1884, when it chose the slippery James G. Blaine as its presidential nominee.

In the cartoon, Blaine is depicted as an imposter who is out of his league.  His scandal-ridden past is indelibly tattooed on his flesh.  The flimsy cloak he wears can’t hide his true nature as a servile tool.

He stands abased before the lofty legacy of past presidents.  His hat, labeled “Corruption,” is falling off, as, quaking, he begins his assault on the nation’s highest office.  Leaning against him and pushing him from behind is Jay Gould, who excelled in getting government concessions for the railroads he owned.  Gould has his sights set on stacking the bench.  The paper he holds reads “Four Supreme Court judges to be appointed by the next president.” 

Also behind Blaine is Stephen W. Dorsey, a former US Senator implicated in the “Star Routes Scandal,” whereby a circle of profiteers bilked the Treasury of millions of dollars by colluding on bids for carrying the mail.  Dorsey is depicted as a bootlicker.  Next to him on the floor is a paper that reads “Honesty No Requisite for the Presidency (Blaine’s Theory).”

Finally, to the right of the stairs stands Benjamin F. Butler, dressed up as a court jester possessing a “Bargain with Blaine.”  Butler’s controversial actions as the military governor of wartime New Orleans, coupled with his opportunistic political maneuverings, made him a weathervane of the Gilded Age.  Vastly wealthy as a result of both honest and questionable business dealings during the Civil War, Butler was arguably providing cover for Blaine in 1884, for he was on the ticket as a third-party presidential candidate for the People’s Party.  Rumor held that Butler’s candidacy was a Republican-backed sham, to draw off votes from Blaine’s opponent, Democrat Grover Cleveland.

It was no use.  On Election Day in November 1884, Americans went to the polls and saved the nation from James G. Blaine.  They rejected the stink of Republican corruption and, for the first time since 1856, elected a Democratic president.  

Dislodging the President

US map showing partisan voting inclinations by county.

Donald Trump will remain in the presidency until we dislodge him.  No matter how many millions of citizens want him gone, the means of achieving this goal before 2020 are narrow and few, and most depend on the inclination of other major government officials.  In this review of the options, I conclude that Donald Trump is unlikely to be removed from office until his opponents become better organized and gain control of both the House and Senate.

Click here for the audio version.

1. Impeaching the president

Whether or not there are grounds for impeaching President Trump, impeachment depends on Congress’s will.  As the US House website puts it: “The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to impeach an official, and it makes the Senate the sole court for impeachment trials.”  Whereas initially I imagined that an anti-Trump coalition might emerge among Capitol Hill Republicans, that hope has died.  A few Republican senators have criticized the president, but their opposition remains personal, episodic, isolated.  Recent events show that Republicans have decided to collaborate with Trump rather than try to get rid of him.  Were Congress composed differently, it would be another story.  For now, though, Democratic efforts to have Trump impeached or censured are pointless, for the simple reason that Democrats are in the minority.

2. The special prosecutor

Will the investigations of special prosecutor Robert Mueller—the so-called “Russia probe”—yield information sufficient to remove Trump from office?  If Trump were himself a tool of the Russian government, I believe he would have persisted in trying to fire Mueller or constrain the investigation.*  Trump has (reluctantly) foregone this route, even though his inaction leaves open the possibility that Mueller will eventually press criminal charges against Trump’s children.

Information already made public shows how aggressively agents of the Russian government pursued contacts with members of Trump’s inner circle, testing how many ways they could succeed in corrupting and compromising Trump’s relatives, associates, and administration, and, with them, the American political system.  While the Russians have reason to be satisfied with the success of their audacious experiment, the evidence so far available to the public falls short of establishing that Trump was personally involved.

Were Mueller to bring out evidence that Trump colluded with or was compromised by the Russians, what would happen?  Such evidence could compel the House to impeach, but, as long as Trump is a sitting president, he is largely immune from being charged with a crime.  According to Cass Sunstein, writing in Bloomberg News, a sitting president can only be charged with crimes committed prior to taking his office or unrelated to his presidential role.  In the unlikely event of Trump’s being impeached and convicted, only after being removed from office would he face trial for criminal wrongdoing.  And never has a special prosecution produced such spectacular results.

Impeachment is a serious drag on a presidency, but it’s a clumsy tool, in that Congress has never come to the point of kicking a president out.  In the case of Watergate, Nixon preempted the process by resigning when the threat of impeachment loomed.  Kenneth Starr’s lengthy special investigation prompted Bill Clinton’s impeachment, but ultimately the Senate acquitted Clinton, leaving him to serve out his second term.  Because impeachment is a political but not a criminal proceeding, its outcome is highly discretionary and dependent on political factors.  The only other president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson back in 1868; the Senate acquitted him, too.

3. The 25th Amendment

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1967, allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unable to perform his duties, whereupon the vice president shall assume the president’s role.  Dissatisfaction with Trump has led to increased discussion of the 25th Amendment, as if it were designed to remedy a president’s poor judgment or incompetence.  Michael Wolff, in promoting his sensational new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, has encouraged this misconception by claiming that the 25th Amendment is under discussion in the West Wing “all the time.”  A quick read of the amendment establishes that it applies only to fairly extreme conditions of physical incapacity, for it allows the President to reverse its effects by notifying leaders of Congress that he is again able to discharge his duties.  Last week, the president’s first official physical exam concluded with Dr. Ronny L. Johnson, the physician in charge, proclaiming the 71-year-old Trump to be in “excellent health.”  So wake up, America: unless the President is physically incapacitated, the 25th Amendment won’t be invoked.

4. Shaming the president

The president’s extraordinary behavior following the publication of Wolff’s blistering expose shows his sensitivity to embarrassment of a certain kind.  Yes, Trump has a tough skin, but he hates it when people he respects, whose approval he craves, look down on him.  He hates being confronted with evidence that he is anathema to others who are powerful and celebrated.  Trump looks down on reporters and many of his political rivals, but he is sensitive to criticism that leaves him feeling one-down.  Leading activists have yet to zero in on what symbols can be used to dog Trump and effectively heighten his sense of shame.  Protests against Trump should be orchestrated around the goal of making the president miserable.  Could a strategy of social shaming drive him from office?  It might, if it eats away at his sense of self and robs him of the pleasure he derives from his job.  Nixon resigned from office mainly because he had been disgraced.  The stigma was a punishment that never went away.

5. Winning back Congressional majorities in 2018

The uncertainty of these options suggests how important it is that Trump’s opponents direct their all toward ousting Trump’s Republican collaborators from the US House and Senate.  The GOP is in a weak and troubled condition, and Republicans in Congress, still loyal to their party, have concluded with good reason that if they do not collaborate with the mercurial Trump, their party will fail.  Their numerical supremacy can’t palliate the ideological fissures and Faustian compromises eroding their party’s integrity.  As Democrats lay plans to defeat incumbent Republicans in November, they should remember the millions of moderate Republicans and independents who are looking for a new reason to go to the polls.  Whereas a tilt to the left will not strengthen the Democrats’ alarmingly weak share of political power, with a fresh, moderate ideology, the party could attract thousands of new voters and prevail.

Image: The map by SpeedMcCool from Wikimedia Commons
shows party leanings by congressional district,
using
Cook Partisan Voting Index scores for the (current) 115th Congress.

* This sentence, the subject of discussion in the comments section, has been modified from its original version.

Democracy on the ground

Click on the image to view the New York Times interactive map of House election results.

Click on the image to view the New York Times interactive map of House election results.

This map of House election results from the New York Times dramatically conveys the state of democracy on the ground.  Because the entire House stands for election every two years, the results express the state of local sentiment better than Senate elections can.

The map does not correct for population density, so one must bear in mind that some of the vast red areas represent relatively few people.  Still, it’s sobering to contemplate the restricted appeal of a Democratic ethos.  Just think of all the Americans, living in all the varied settings pictured on this map, to whom Democratic party principles no longer appeal.  Democratic strength is extremely limited geographically, whereas, as David Brooks points out, it’s hard to deny that Republican conservatism represents the mainstream.  It’s ironic, because red regions contain many people who use and benefit from the sorts of programs and services that Democrats perennially champion and defend.  Well-being is not all that drives people to the polls.

The Democratic Party’s ethos no longer resonates with such voters culturally.  Instead, the party has become identified mainly with the coastal and urban regions where more educated people tend to gather.  Looking at this map, it’s easy to understand why ‘mainstream’ Americans resent the undue influence that urban elites exercise through the media.

Many Democrats I know, convinced of the morality and truth of their views, do not see a need to proselytize.  I once asked a liberal friend why she didn’t volunteer to canvas in Democratic campaigns, and she said, “I guess it’s because I’m right—and I think that, if other people can’t see that, there’s nothing I can do.”  It’s a shame, because the Democratic Party is becoming irrelevant to a huge natural constituency of small-town and working-class Americans who are just getting by.  In those broad regions where Democratic leaders are giving up, an important strain of political culture may one day die.

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The Enduring Republican Grip on the House (NYT)

After the Red Wave: What Democrats Should Do

2014midtermcolorbar
Republican gains in Tuesday’s elections delivered a stunning rebuke to Democrats and their party.  The GOP is resurgent, despite having teetered after the 2012 election on the verge of disintegration and decline.

The Republicans achieved this gain primarily by telling voters that, under President Obama and the Democrats, the nation has fared badly.  Republican candidates attacked both the style and substance of the administration.  They assailed a government that they styled as autocratic, expensive, and ineffective.  They railed against government intrusion, and (in the case of illegal immigration) against governmental laxness, too.  They chafed against laws and constraints they don’t believe in.  Most of all, Republicans succeeded by denigrating what will surely be regarded as this era’s most significant achievements, such as the government’s success at bringing the nation back from the brink of all-out economic collapse and at passing a radical yet tenable and comprehensive health-care reform bill.

Strategically, the GOP also took care to marginalize some of the worst kooks seeking to work their way up in the party’s ranks.  The Republican National Committee under Reince Priebus encouraged and supported more electable candidates whose messages would still resonate with conservatives.  The policy also served the goal of producing a Republican Congress that is more homogeneous and governable.  Anyway, as campaign strategy, it worked.  Even weak candidates like Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas won.

Sadly, the Democrats were afraid to be identified with their party’s strengths.  They also failed to deliver a vision of government, that, if consonant with their recent achievements, was fresh and forward-looking.  As the president’s time in office wanes, Democrats should be thinking about how to catch the next wave.  What should the Democratic Party be about, once heavyweights like Obama and the Clintons are gone?  The Dems are notably short on galvanizing up-and-comers who could breathe new life into what has become a too-staid and centrist political party.

Chiefly, though, the Democrats have failed to accommodate and adapt to legitimate criticisms of Democratic governance and ideology.  In particular, they do not seem attuned to the people’s desire for a government that, if powerful, is deft and efficient.  They have not cared enough about the national mood to break with the president and demand Congressional debate on issues like our open-ended bombing campaign against the Islamic State.*  Nor have Democrats cared enough about the middle and lower classes to attack the glaring issue of corporate responsibility, favoring a rise in the minimum wage, yes, but remaining silent on a host of policies that work against working-class prosperity while benefiting corporations and the interests of global capital unduly.

Renew themselves: in short, this is what the Democrats must do.  Dare to be a more interesting, local, peaceful, green, and economical party.  Dare to think small, and find new ways to promote prosperity that rely less on government spending and more on shrewd uses of information and technology.  Scour the countryside for young, charismatic, ardent, and innovative political thinkers.  Restore pride in American citizenship and civic culture.  And move beyond the paradigm of the social-welfare state in trying to figure out how to give a stagnant, suffering America what it wants and needs.

* The president has since called on Congress to debate and authorize the bombing campaign.