America: Up against a Wall

Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency and his imperious notion of power, American society and politics have been fractured like never before. With 13 months until the next presidential election, and facing an impeachment inquiry initiated by Democrats, Republicans are going to have to make a crucial choice between partisan loyalty and respect for the Constitution.

The Democratic Party’s decision to launch a preliminary impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump has had a seismic effect on Washington. But dramatization of the clash was unavoidable. Since coming to power in January 2017, the White House resident has posed an unprecedented challenge to the values and institutions of American democracy, which were bound to run into a wall sooner or later.

Trump’s career as a “daddy’s boy” and reality TV host did not prepare him for the limits that the Constitution places on the head of state. In his book, “The Enemy of the People” (Harper Collins, 2019), famed CNN journalist Jim Acosta definitively proves that the “chaos candidate,” as he was nicknamed by the former Republican governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, wishes only for his own pleasure. His “America First” is conflated with “Me First.” Trump simply believes that institutions are meant to stand at attention for the executive, out of respect for the voters’ choice, forgetting, incidentally, that he received 3 million fewer votes than his rival Hillary Clinton.

The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers

It is not in this spirit of majority omnipotence that the Founding Fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution. On the contrary. They distrusted both the tyranny of the monarchy and the tyranny of the majority. To guard against them, they implemented a system of separation of powers, of checks and balances, destined to ward off authoritarian urges and temper plebeian passions. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” James Madison, the fourth American president, declared famously. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

A Demonization of Counterbalances and of the Opposition

From the beginning, Trump has been annoyed at being contradicted by the judiciary branch, the civil service and the media. Judges who interceded were accused of bias, and irreverent journalists were demonized, whereas nonpartisan government agencies, such as the FBI or the CIA, were suspected of belonging to a deep state, hostile to the electoral choice of the American people.

Since the midterm elections in November 2018 which gave Democrats control of the House, the president has proven that he will not tolerate Congressional prerogative either. His efforts at obstruction and his barrage of tweets confirm his imperious concept of power.

A Polarized Political Stage

This confrontation is all the more heated because, in recent years, the political stage has become deeply polarized. Spurred by tea party agitators and rich donors linked to ultraconservative groups (for example, the Council for National Policy, as described by journalist Anne Nelson in her new book, “Shadow Networks”), the Republican Party has moved increasingly to the right, even so far as extremism. The axis of the Democratic Party, on the other hand, has shifted to the left, more in harmony with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

This polarization has spread to the media. On the right and far right is a Republican noise machine bundled around Fox News, evangelical channels, populist talk shows and conspiracy or supremacist online media. For the center and center-left there are The New York Times, The Washington Post and television channels CNN and MSNBC. As a result, Norman Ornstein, analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think tank, is concerned that America has attained a level of tribalism not seen since the Civil War.

The Ball Is in the Republicans’ Court

This division is so strong that American society is once again confronting its national identity. Published in 2004, Samuel Huntington’s book entitled “Who Are We?” was prophetic. Chanting his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” Trump evokes not only the prosperity of the 30-year postwar boom but also a past in which the white population, Anglo-Saxon and Christian, seemed destined by providence to dominate America, alone and forever.

Faced with these seismic societal and political shifts, will the call to respect the Constitution, beyond partisan divisions and questions of identity, be powerful enough? Specifically, what will Republican members of Congress do if abuse of power or treason allegations against Trump prove to be justified?

“I heard someone say if there were a private vote there would be 30 Republican votes. That’s not true. There would be at least 35,” declared a former Republican senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, last week. The figure is improbable, but the remark concerning secrecy indicates that many elected Republicans, at the dawn of the 2020 campaign season, fear the wrath of their base, who are overwhelmingly in favor of Trump, but they also fear reprisal from powerful interest groups that control candidate appointments and campaign financing.

Nevertheless, the question will inevitably be asked. And it will be vital. It will be necessary to choose between partisan loyalty and respect for the Constitution, between tribalism and the common good. And this choice will define, to borrow the title of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s authoritative essay, “The Idea that Is America.” The question was asked during the 1930s between Franklin Roosevelt and even then those who heralded “America First.” And it was asked in 1974, between the defenders, even then, of the “dignity of the office of president” and Richard Nixon, mired in the Watergate scandal.