Cross-posted from Letters Blogatory
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
If there’s one thing the election of Donald Trump has shown, it’s the strength of our formal political institutions. Do you disagree? Consider that in many states at many times in history, a democratically elected person so manifestly unfit for office would not have been allowed to take office. Yet there is no real risk of the American “deep state” carrying out a coup d’état or otherwise preventing Mr. Trump’s inauguration later this week. Once our formal constitutional process for election of the President concluded on January 6 (when Congress certified the electoral vote tally), that was that. We should be enormously proud of the strength of our formal institutions.
So if, when Representative John Lewis said, a few days ago, “I don’t see this President-elect as a legitimate president,” he meant that Mr. Trump was not validly elected, then he was clearly and dangerously in the wrong. His comment would be dangerous in the same way that birtherism, the view that President Obama was constitutionally ineligible to be President because he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States, was dangerous: both views undermine confidence in the formal constitutional mechanisms that have allowed us to prosper for more than two centuries.
But maybe Representative Lewis had something else in mind. Maybe he didn’t mean that Mr. Trump’s election somehow violated the written constitution, but that his actions before and after election have violated the unwritten constitution. Maybe the phrase is a little misleading. The unwritten constitution is not the law. It’s the norms, expectations, and traditions that let the government work. Every country has an unwritten constitution in this sense.
How could we make sense of Rep. Lewis’s comment if this second reading is right? Here are some thoughts.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to hold press conferences attended by the press and to answer reporters’ questions, or give good reasons for not answering them. A press conference is not a rally, and supporters should not be cheering from the sidelines.
- The unwritten constitution requires that the press corps have offices in the White House, where they can meet and interact with senior officials.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to listen to his advisers and respect their expertise, and the idea of expertise.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to speak respectfully about members of Congress, the press, and private citizens, even if they disagree with him or don’t speak respectfully about him.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to speak carefully, especially when speaking about foreign or military affairs, so that our intentions are clear to our allies and to our adversaries.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to arrange his financial and business affairs so that he has no actual or apparent conflicts of interest.
- The unwritten constitution requires the President to have a legislative program. If his party controls Congress, he works with the majority leadership to craft his program. If not, he seeks to negotiate with the majority.
Notice what I didn’t say. The unwritten constitution does not require government-mandated health insurance. The unwritten constitution does not require open borders with Mexico, or that people in the country illegally should be able to stay. The unwritten constitution does not require sensible gun control laws or that we sign free trade deals. In short, for Democrats, we need to distinguish between the polices that a President Pence or a President Ryan might try to enact—we don’t like them, but we’re in the minority—and challenges to our unwritten constitution. For Republicans, we need to enact our program and yet have the courage to carry out our oversight responsibilities and to stand up to Trump when he challenges our unwritten constitution.
President Obama, in his farewell address, said some of this much better than I could when he pointed out the importance of animating the written Constitution with the values of our unwritten constitution:
Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift. But it’s really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own. We, the people, give it power. We, the people, give it meaning. With our participation, and with the choices that we make, and the alliances that we forge. Whether or not we stand up for our freedoms. Whether or not we respect and enforce the rule of law. That’s up to us. America is no fragile thing. But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured.
Other unwritten point:
The President’s health is now transparent to the public.
Each president adds to it, and when they break it substantially, it may get added to the written constitution or body of laws.
No third term.
No appointing relatives to cabinet positions.
And it has to do with the written constitution.
– John Lewis
He’s seen intel that the rest of us have not.
Big problem here – many of us don’t trust our institutions. John Lewis is not exempt – his attempt to cast doubt on Bernie Sanders’ civil rights record doesn’t help him here.
reliability. It’s rarely, if ever, 100% reliable. In this regard, there was less wrong with the WMD intelligence and more wrong with the Bush Administration’s use of it.
What would be as important as the actual intel is the ability to understand it in context.
It’s really lazy analysis when’s Trump uses it and it’s disheartening to see BMGers repeat it here. It was a reasonable assumption given the facts available to the agencies at the time to conclude Saddam had WMD’s. Forcing the inspectors back in made sense, and had Saddam refused to cooperate I would’ve supported a (far more limited) military action to compel him to comply. But he did comply, and there was no good reason for Bush to pull them out and go to war when he did.
It was never a reasonable assumption to unilaterally end the inspections and go to war based on a hunch that a) he had them and b) would use them. B) makes even less sense in light of the fact that other unstable regimes have WMDs and didn’t use them, and that he was effectively contained by No Fly Zones.
I do not doubt our intelligence here. Unlike Saddam, Putin has every motivation to manipulate our electoral system, there is proof he has done it before, and he certainly has the means to do it. The costs to him have largely been cosmetic rather than existential. The sanctions haven’t effected his regimes survival or legitimacy in the long run. And it’s obvious why he did that in this case.
I think it’s the lack of skepticism, particularly given the history of such things.
But what makes us sure that this situation is different – unless we have intelligence to judge for ourselves?
How many more wars based on stuff-that-isn’t-true before we become skeptical?
1) Policymakers go to war, not analysts
Intelligence is just that, information. How we choose to act on it is a different category entirely. The Iraq War was ultimately a political decision made by policymakers, not analysts. The CIA did not choose to go to war, the President was mistakenly given the authority to go to war by Congress and abused it.
2) Analysts are united on Russia hacking, were split on Iraq
The IC was divided between folks like Tenant who thought it was a ‘slam dunk’ and folks like Richard Clarke, Valerie Plame and Scott Ritter who were ostracized from the decision making process and attacked by the administration which wanted war. There are no similarly credible dissenters on the hacking today.
3) This intel answers a different question
This isn’t a question about war-it is a question about foreign interference in an election. They had the means, they had the motive, and the available evidence indicates they did the deed.
Maybe because people don’t understand it.
They had game theorists at work on analyzing Saddam’s moves. Based on their thinking, it appeared that he did have WMDs, not faking like he had them.
When you think about it, if you were faking would you let your country be blown up and invaded?
Some thought after the fact that his people told him he had them (and he believed it) when they did not. However it all came about, it’s very easy to say at this point it was a bad mistake. It was harder at the time.
I don’t doubt he wanted WMDs and thought he had them, but it’s also obvious his attempts at revenge backfired and his regional ambitions were largely contained. There was no need to finish him off if his terror was contained to the nation state he controlled.
Saddam was contained by no-fly zones and was a rational enough actor to be contained by assured destruction, which was never mutually assured. We always had an overwhelming advantage and our own nuclear arsenal made his use of any potential arsenal he had obsolete and impotent. The only risk was further proliferation in the region and that he might give WMDs to terrorists, but it was a risk that was well contained and mitigated by inspections. Which is not the case in the post-Saddam order which is far less stable and secure.
Not arguing with you per se, but I never understood the problem with Saddam having WMDs in the first place. He was just as likely to use them against us as the North Koreans-both horrible regimes led by evil people who nevertheless understood that their own regimes would end if they attacked us.
It’s important to keep Putin in perspective as well. His goal is not a global hegemony like the Soviets but merely a regional one. Obama is correct that he has lost far more from sanctions and Syria than he has gained, but like the Chinese they recognize the way to beat the United States is assymetrically. Like many American voters, he has gambled on the chaos of Trump as the preferred alternative to the known quantities of Hillary Clinton. So far, he has wagered rather successfully.
I knew it was a mistake. In fact, I couldn’t believe we would actually go to war. Foolishly, I thought we learned our lessons from Vietnam. In fact, going in at that time was a no-brainer: don’t do it. This was a completely artificial country created by the British with a Sunni minority governing a Shia majority. The risks of entering were to extreme to chance it at that moment.
We were still living in the days when Democrats were trying to prove that they had as much hair on their chests as the Republicans. They should have put up some principled opposition rather than unprincipled capitulation.
Julian Assange, the conduit of the info, for one. Also these guy: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/
It’s entirely possible that Putin and Co. exposed the garbage taking place at the ClintonDNC apparatus to try to throw the election. But the people telling us to trust them on this have track records of making things up. Until there’s actual evidence of it that we can see for ourselves, we’d best be careful.
I’ll take the 17 intelligence agencies over him or former officials not necessarily privy to the evidence.
That’s citing Assange.
Thank you.
I believe Don the Con was not legitimately elected because of a decades long campaign of gerrymandering and voter suppression. In addition, they gamed the Electoral College by concentrating on certain states and certain counties to win the Electors rather than the popular vote. Nothing they did, at least in this, was “illegal” or “unconstitutional” but was in direct violation of the spirit of democracy, equality, and justice. And they knew it, in fact, are boasting about it.
…”they gamed the Electoral College by concentrating on certain states and certain counties to win the Electors rather than the popular vote.”
As did Hillary Clinton. As does every presidential candidate.
But the voter suppression has more in common with Third World teetering democracies than first world ones.
The Trump campaign, from the statements I’ve read since the election, NEVER competed for the popular vote. They focused on the Electoral College very narrowly. To my knowledge, that is something no other Presidential campaign has ever done.
But then, I could be wrong.
Clinton and the Dims did not have the gerrymandering advantage nor the voter suppression for their opponent’s supporters that the Repugs did. Both of those tactics are inherently anti-democratic and unjust, though not illegal, in our system.
…so gerrymandering in the context of a presidential race is largely moot.
And I largely agree with this analysis and find it a useful framing going forward on a variety of fronts. Protesting the election is a doomed cause, protesting the harmful actions of this presidency is a righteous one.
But an unhelpful one. Are Trump’s voters likely to respond well to it, and if not, are we helping to elect someone else in 2020?
….”give the guy a chance, heck, he’s not even sworn in yet!”
And I resist the urge to shout back “Have you seen who he is appointing in his cabinet?!?!?”
Instead, I ask, “Give him a chance to do what? What should we expect from him?”
All I get back in response is “lower taxes and get the government off our backs”…
to fool people than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled.”
Most Bush supporters were eventually convinced.
There’s a lot of doubt that Mark Twain actually said that. Too bad. Great line.
And “there’s a sucker born every minute”
Twain would have said it, if he used those words.
Each day I grow more and more concerned that our nation is going to ruin. Idiocracy was supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary.
We are definitely going through a terrible period in our history. My father worries for his grandchildren (though not well off, his kids are okay). He thinks about the fact that his father died when he was 16, but somehow he was able to go to community college, college, and grad school, then become a teacher, then a special education director at a time when money was less of an object than a child’s well-being.
He made a good living, has a good retirement, spent money on his kids. His oldest granddaughter has $70,000 in loans (my sister paid down $50,000 when she sold her house) and waits tables. He doesn’t think his grandchildren will enjoy this lifestyle.
Does that mean the world will end in May?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/14/entertainment/ringling-circus-closing/
…not from throwing out certain norms, the importance of maintaining we could debate until the cows come home, but rather the meddling on the part of both Russia and the FBI. While yes, constitutionally, his electoral votes put him over the top, when you are historically the biggest loser among EC winners in a system and political culture that values popular choice, that’s a chink in your legitimacy as well. Obama got popular majorities twice without this kind of meddling. PLEASE do not equate concerns about Trump’s legitimacy with known falsehoods regarding Obama’s birthplace!