Karyn Bartosic
January 20, 2021
As the Trump administration comes to a close, almost in spite of itself, many hours will be spent and ink used ruminating on the lasting effects of the administration and how to ‘fix the Trump problem.’ This will not be wasted effort nor are these effects negligible, but it will be a mistake to focus on Trump as a virus rather than a symptom. Leaders such as Trump and, more to the point, their successes in gaining and wielding power, do not poof into thin air, nor are they simply handed power against an unwilling populace, much as colloquial history likes to make it seem. And although we love to romanticize, there is never one singular event which has caused significant change. There was more to the rise of the Roman Empire than the Ides of March, more to World War I than the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and there is more to the current crisis of American politics than Donald Trump.
A sometimes-bankrupted real estate tycoon and former reality TV star first became the Republican nominee out of seventeen candidates and then the president of the United States. However, from his campaign announcement at Trump Tower in June of 2015, until the moment the election was called in his favor, most media, political elites, and intelligentsia of the country treated a Trump victory as a farcical impossibility. His cult of personality so influential that supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, an event utterly shocking, but to many, myself included, not surprising. So, why did he succeed? Why did next to nobody see it coming? And, most importantly, how does America move forward?
It is this last question I will focus my attentions on here, and it is one I hope will engender as much attention as the other two are sure to do.
Concentration and bolstering of executive power and a normalization of the degradation of institutions and precedents were the two main tools Donald Trump used to advance his agenda and do his utmost to wield autocratic-esque power from the White House. His actions were shockingly extreme to many, especially to Washington, used to the cycle of White House to think tank and back again, holding an unwavering faith in institutional powers, perhaps to a fault, as we have seen. However, Trump was not the first president to wield executive orders to circumvent Congress, nor was he the first to use an expanded presidential power to satisfy his own agenda.
Trump inherited a legacy of an increasingly powerful executive of the United States, the branch and its leader gaining power as the country strayed further and further from its isolationist roots and as growing need for regulation led to more administrative agencies. Executive power took leaps rather than steps to increase its authority in times of crisis: see Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression, his War Powers Act during World War II, and, recently, George W. Bush’s Patriot Act in the wake of the 9/11. Article II is fairly vague in its delineation of presidential powers and presidents have taken full advantage of that over the years; thusly, presidential powers have come to be defined by the norms and precedents set by the 45 men who have occupied the office, rather than by the Constitution itself.[i] Trump used this power in shocking ways, yes—the Travel Ban and the order to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border come to mind—but not only was the tactic itself extant, precedent had already been set many times over.
Masha Gessen, in her latest book Surviving Autocracy, discusses, among other things, the normalization of Trump’s blatant lies, racism, and other wildly unpresidential and generally inappropriate behavior that we have all numbed to. He was an impossibility made possible; did this mean that he was not as horrible as his opponents feared? Did it mean that the blustery, anti-government speeches and the 3 a.m. tweets were not harbingers of a destructive administration?[ii] He was, after all, elected the Republican nominee out of a field of 17, and then president; surely the institutions and ideals of American democracy insulate against a willfully ignorant and autocrat-resembling president. How do the media or the public engage with a president who blatantly lies and continues business-as-usual, unrepentant in the face of what felt like weekly scandals, one of which might be the end of any ‘normal’ presidency? They don’t.
Trump has been able to shape the narrative, the debates, and the spotlight for four years. Questions of truth and falsehood emerged, denunciations of his actions were tweeted, fact checking became entire columns of news outlets, political discourse a faint shadow of its former self. The traditional language and rules of engagement from pre-Trump Washington do not work because they require mutual respect and a shared understanding of one another as having an equal say in the matter at hand. Trump operates as an autocrat: disagreement is equivalent to disrespect of him and his power.[iii] This aspect of his presidency did not have precedent; in fact, he did his level best to destroy almost all presidential norms that we have come to see as standards and practices of the office: meaningful daily press briefings, announcements of policy via press releases rather than tweets in caps lock, support of his own agencies’ recommendations and reports rather than denunciation. As we look to the Biden administration and beyond, as we all seek a return to normalcy, we should remember that a return to normal does not mean stagnation. We must continue to defend democracy, to hope and strive for better.
January 6, 2021 is indelibly imprinted in my memory, watching a live news feed so surreal that the next morning for a moment it felt like it could have been a bad dream. It was not. It was the logical conclusion of four years of inflammatory rhetoric riddled with falsehoods coming from the mouth of the President of the United States. We watched the heart of our democracy attacked, our representatives threatened, and offices ransacked. It was heartbreaking. The 6th should be taken as a stark warning of how complacent America has become in its democracy and a call to action so that it does not happen again.
In the face of watching our democracy seem to take several steps backwards these past four years, it can be hard to remember why we work so hard at democracy; if the checks and balances and institutions can be so easily torn apart, why go to all the effort? Democracy is hard work. It is easy to understand why autocracy can be attractive, one person making decisions which are thusly carried out. China, for instance, can easily set aside billions of dollars for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and infrastructure to combat climate change, no pesky deliberation required. Some of the richest countries in the world are some of the least free. It is hard to stand by one’s principles in everyday life; it is that much harder for a country to do so for almost 250 years.
“The Great American Experiment.” It is not perfect in its execution, things rarely are, but the ideas it is founded on are worth the struggles they engender. It is not an easy task, but it is a worthwhile task which we are bound to. It is part of what makes us Americans. Each day millions of people wake up and live and exercise personal freedoms that are not simply allowed by the government, but protected from the government, protections enshrined in the very documents that founded the nation. That is very special, and an idea worth fighting for. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said while receiving the Radcliffe Medal at Harvard University, “Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”[iv] I care about this country and its future. These same values which were fought for by all those who came before, who improved upon them, as the generations after us will continue to do.
Rather than stagnate in technocratic proceduralism, I think it is high time we remember our idealism. The values that America was founded on have not been enacted perfectly, but they are a shared vision, a positive goal to strive for, to constantly encourage betterment. This is not an easy task. It will take concerted effort from all parties involved. It will take the young and hopeful, the old and jaded. Although as of 2020 millennials and Generation Z constitute more than half of the U.S. population and 37% of the voting population,[v] they are barely represented in the federal government; the average age of the Senate is 62.9, Congress a bit younger at 57.6. Newly elected Congresspeople this year averaged 58.1 and 47.9, respectively.[vi] Necessary change will need new voices from these younger generations if it is to happen. Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell are 80 and 78 years old, respectively. They have both been in Washington for decades and are prime examples supporting term limits. Part of a healthy, functioning democracy is challenge to those in power.
Since 1964, 93% of House incumbents have won reelection alongside 82% of their Senatorial colleagues. A lot of the reason for that is the high cost of successful campaigns. Millions of dollars go into congressional campaigns and challengers never have equal access to the massive funding opportunities incumbents do.[vii] Election cycles last over a year, over half of a House member’s term. Most other democracies in the world have strict limits on time frame, funding, and campaign opportunities which help to level the campaign playing field. Money begets political power which begets more money, and on it goes. If we want lasting, positive change to take place, we must embrace the unknown of the future rather than revert to the stale, if comforting, past.
As the Biden transition team goes to work, we are witnessing a return to the Great Before with a cabinet full of Obama alumni who are generally centrist, competent, with some box-checking diversity to appease the identity politics of the Democratic party. Many, myself included, are nostalgic for the Great Before, for traditional pomp and circumstance, for measured, diplomatic speeches, for debates of policy rather than constitutionalism; in short, for a ‘presidential’ president. However, I think this is the opportune moment to look forward, to find a politics of tomorrow. We must draw on the lessons of the past, of course—I am not a Classics major for nothing—but this is an opportunity to forge something new. American democracy was designed to be and always has been a work in progress.
Langston Hughes articulated this beautifully in 1936, when America was still crawling out of the Great Depression and grappling with its identity:
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
…
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again![viii]
We are a country founded on lofty, yes, but worthy ideas, of shared values and inalienable rights, not on pragmatism or the supremacy of the dollar.
It is time we remember that.
[i] U.S. Const. art. II; Erin Peterson, “Presidential Power Surges,” Harvard Law Today, July 17, 2019, https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/presidential-power-surges/.
[ii] Masha Gessen, “Surviving Autocracy,” (New York: Riverhead Books, 2020).
[iii] Gessen, “Surviving Autocracy.”
[iv] Colleen Walsh, “Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsberg,” The Harvard Gazette, May 29, 2015, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/honoring-ruth-bader-ginsburg/.
[v] William H. Frey, “Now, more than half of Americans are millennials or younger,” Brookings, July 30, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/07/30/now-more-than-half-of-americans-are-millennials-or-younger/.
[vi] Jennifer E. Manning, Membership of the 116th Congress: A Profile, CRS Rep., at 1 (2020), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45583.pdf.
[vii] John W. Schoen, “Incumbents in Congress are hard to beat – and a lot of it has to do with money,” April 26, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/26/here-is-why-incumbents-in-congress-are-hard-to-beat.html
[viii] Langston Hughes, “Let America be America again,” 1936.
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