The White House in the Age of Reality TV
"I know everyone here will soon march to the Capitol building to make their voices heard peacefully and patriotically." Donald J. Trump • January 6, 2020
For the past month, I have been researching and writing about corruption and political scandals in the United States. I found it fascinating to discover a whole literature debate on political corruption and the different approaches to a problem that seems has only gotten more challenging to tackle. My sense is that there is clarity regarding what needs to be done since the problems have long been diagnosed, but there is no political will to solve them; instead, the system's loopholes and weaknesses have deepened. The most damaging part of it is that shortly after the Watergate scandal, it was obvious that a significant overhaul was needed, but instead, the system reacted to protect political interests rather than the system itself.
It is difficult to understand the nature of the current political crisis if we don’t recognize that the political institutions, specifically the party system, are paralyzed by this threat. The unfortunate circumstance of political parties owned by dark money makes the challenge even more difficult for a Democratic Party that has to reluctantly attempt to try to defeat the Republican Party at its own game. After Citizens United, the legalization of interest groups defining policy agenda has brought the overturn of Roe v. Wade, environmental rules, and, very likely, the end of same-sex marriage and contraception.
Following the Watergate scandal, Berg, Hahn, and Schmidhauser warned, "As long as the country does not adopt major changes in government institutions, American history is doomed to periodic episodes of Watergate." Fast forward forty years and Trump landed in the White House.
The parallels between Watergate and the many scandals during the Trump presidency can be seen in the abuse of power and the conviction of being above the law. Both Nixon and Trump believed that they could use the presidency not to exercise their authority, but to use it against the system and individuals, to achieve political and personal benefit without fear of consequences. In this sense, the fact that the conditions have remained the same (or even worse) after Watergate makes it clear that the problem continues to be the institutional weakness and the legal limits to regulate the Executive.
The twice impeached president is under investigation in several cases, but there is one that is not only the most serious but the most telling of them all. The case is in the hands of Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, and it couldn’t be more straightforward. Willis is looking into the request made by former president Trump to Georgia’s Secretary of State to find the 11.780 votes he needed to win the state. This case tells us what the president wanted, but more importantly, what he thought he could do with his political power.
The January 6th insurrection was part of a sequence of events that represented the complete disregard for norms and institutions the Republican Party has embraced as a means to retain power as a minority party. The system didn’t work because President Biden was sworn in. If it had, that wouldn’t have been under threat by a mob ‘inspired’ by the losing incumbent. In fact, the United States survived an attempt to bring down its democracy because it barely made it through a conspiracy orchestrated within the government. Had there not been a few guardrails in the states, like Georgia’s Secretary or a Democratic majority in the House, we would be telling a different story.
However, this attack is in no way over. The repetition of the insurrection that took place on January 6th is currently under preparation. After the rehearsal, the Republican Party knows what to do the next time to make it successful. That explains the ongoing assault from school boards to the secretary of state elections, making it clear that they want to control the process starting with the counting and threatening to contest results they deem ‘fraudulent.’
Republicans don’t think they can win elections anymore, but that’s not discouraging them from doing whatever it takes to prevent Democrats from being elected. This sums up the current crisis: one of the two main political parties is not a functional democratic institution. The country is in turmoil because the outgoing president couldn’t deal with his electoral defeat and instead decided to drag the electoral process through this destructive path.
It will be up to the Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers left in the Republican Party to recover it from the hands of the illiberal forces plowing through it, but it will take every American, regardless of party registration, to save this democracy. It’s not about protecting the Biden presidency. The current challenges, inflation, and high gas prices, are circumstantial. The pandemic has brought serious dysfunctions to the global economy, but the upending of democracy by the illiberal Republican Party will last for generations if they are not prevented from holding office until they expel the radicalized voices that have taken over the former conservative party.
(Houston, 1989) Richard Carson/Houston Chronicle/AP