Consensus Is Good for America
Published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(Germany) on 04 March 2024
by Andreas Ross (link to
original)
It is a good sign for America that the Supreme Court justices are basically in agreement that Trump should be allowed to run for president everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that the court has kept itself out of the election.
It may be bad news for American democracy that the authoritarian-inclined Donald Trump has prospects of returning to the White House, where he at the very least wants to act as a “dictator” from day one. But it is good news that the Supreme Court has put the kibosh on his exclusion from primaries in Colorado and other states.
A Little Cooling
It was not an act of political rescue by a majority of “Trump justices” but a decision also made with the three liberal justices, even if there are differences in the details. Heated tempers are probably not going to cool down entirely in the United States going into the 15 primaries on Super Tuesday, but they may calm somewhat.
By finding that an article of the Constitution exhumed by Trump’s opponents does not allow individual states to disqualify candidates for the country’s highest office, the justices avoided the most contentious question: Did Trump “participate” in an insurrection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? There is a lot of evidence in favor of that view, but not even Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is charging Trump with election fraud, went that far in his indictment.
That important trial should have begun this week, but the Supreme Court is taking its time reviewing Trump’s grotesque claim to presidential immunity. This waiting game is the real friendly turn by the “Trump justices.” The signal of unanimity in the most recent ruling can’t hide that fact.
It may be bad news for American democracy that the authoritarian-inclined Donald Trump has prospects of returning to the White House, where he at the very least wants to act as a “dictator” from day one. But it is good news that the Supreme Court has put the kibosh on his exclusion from primaries in Colorado and other states.
A Little Cooling
It was not an act of political rescue by a majority of “Trump justices” but a decision also made with the three liberal justices, even if there are differences in the details. Heated tempers are probably not going to cool down entirely in the United States going into the 15 primaries on Super Tuesday, but they may calm somewhat.
By finding that an article of the Constitution exhumed by Trump’s opponents does not allow individual states to disqualify candidates for the country’s highest office, the justices avoided the most contentious question: Did Trump “participate” in an insurrection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? There is a lot of evidence in favor of that view, but not even Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is charging Trump with election fraud, went that far in his indictment.
That important trial should have begun this week, but the Supreme Court is taking its time reviewing Trump’s grotesque claim to presidential immunity. This waiting game is the real friendly turn by the “Trump justices.” The signal of unanimity in the most recent ruling can’t hide that fact.
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