Zack Beauchamp expresses understandable alarm at the failure to convict President Trump on Vox:
Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal is a warning sign that something has gone deeply wrong in our political system. It shows a kind of subtle corruption of the law that has, in other countries, led to the decline and fall of their democratic systems in their entirety.
Senate Republicans didn’t violate the Constitution’s rules for holding an impeachment trial. They adhered fairly reasonably to the letter of the law and can credibly claim they did all that was legally required of them. But this was a sham trial, one whose outcome was never seriously in doubt. By following the formal rules, Senate Republicans gave this fiction a veneer of formal legitimacy. All of them, with the brave exception of Mitt Romney, weaponized the letter of the law against its spirit.
This kind of corrupt legalism is a common practice among ruling parties in democracies that have fallen into autocracy. That these regimes contain the most direct parallels to what’s just happened in America makes clear the precise way in which our democracy is under attack. We should not fear a coup or seizure of authoritarian emergency powers, but a slow hollowing-out of our legal system to the point where the people no longer have meaningful control over their leaders.
First, let’s acknowledge that Zack and Vox are over on the left side of political spectrum; I doubt that any publications over on the right side, unless they of the NeverTrumper variety, would express similar sentiments.
But after that, let’s talk about political systems and what makes them likely to succeed or fail. It’s popular to talk about the structure of political systems, especially the American system, how the various parts balance and monitor each other, etc etc. Designing a stable political system is a fascinating theoretical exercise for a certain class of people. I’ve never really indulged, but I can feel the pull.
But often omitted from this discussion is people, the meat of the system, if you’ll permit a slightly disturbing expression. In my experience, a political system functions best when the vast majority of the citizenry believes both the letter and the spirit of the political system is best for them and gives them the best opportunity for prosperity.
But just as importantly, the deviance of those on the political ladder correlates with the malfunctioning of the political system in direct correlation with their height up that ladder. That is, the more important the political leader – say, Senator Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) – who views the current political system with little or no reverence, to borrow a term, the more that political system is likely to malfunction.
So I think Beauchamp is guilty of a slight error when he faults the political system. Honestly, and much to the dismay of a number of observers, theoreticians, and not a few software engineers, the system doesn’t matter if the people, up and down the ladder of power, are not behind it[1].
And the evidence that an important class of political leaders, namely nearly the entire Republican Senate, as well as the Republican House membership, has lost their reverence for the political system, as set forth in the Constitution, is clear and apparent to the observer willing to put aside their prejudices. Only Representative Amash, who resigned from the GOP, and Senator Romney of Utah voted for impeachment and conviction, respectively, and made clear statements of how the actions of President Trump were wrong on a tremendous scale.
Their Party colleagues, when push came to shove, even admitted Trump’s activities were criminal, but with little to no explanation claimed they didn’t meet the bar of high crimes. They’ve lost their reverence for the political system they are sworn to uphold.
There is no legal punishment for this sort of mass failure of a political party; they can only be voted out of power by an outraged citizenry. We can only hope the Democrats are capable of ably communicating this meltdown in the Republicans to a citizenry that is very busy and highly distractable. We’ll find out in November. And if they’re not, then the citizenry will be getting what it deserves. Maybe a little more prosperity, but at the cost of their political freedom and a future of leading the world. The United States will become another failed experiment in the difficult art of governance.
1 Which, not incidentally, is why nation-building doesn’t depend on the competency of the first nation in the process of “gifting” the second nation with democracy, but on the willingness of the populace of the second nation to espouse democracy.
