On November 6, Americans will cast their votes in the midterm elections. Many have called these elections the most important in our lifetime. The question is “important in regards to what?” Is it in order to declare our approval or disapproval of the president’s policies and executive style and the Republican’s legislative actions, including their Supreme Court appointments? Is it in order to restore checks and balances with respect to how the US government is conducted? Or is it to reaffirm certain fundamental American values?
To different people all or only one of these reasons may matter. I will argue the third is the most important. First, and with regards to checks and balances, let’s clarify that party dominance in designing and enacting policies is not what was foremost in the minds of the framers of the American Constitution. After all, most parliamentary democracies bestow this privilege to the governing party, which usually controls the executive as well as the legislative branch. The reason checks and balances were written into the American constitution – by recognizing all three branches as co-equal – was to prevent the president from becoming an autocrat and tyrant in the mold of the much hated, at the time, British king.
It seems that fortuitously or for some underlying reason, Americans have heeded the framers’ concern and, with few exceptions, have produced bi-partisan governments. I have found that over the past one hundred years one-party dominance (by that I mean all three branches are controlled by the same party) has happened five times. The Democrats have held full control sometime in the years 1937-45 (during the FDR era) and in 1961-69 (under JFK and Johnson); whereas the GOP has had control sometime in the years 1927-33 (under Hoover) and in 2001-07 (under G. W. Bush), and again since 2016 under Donald Trump.
In reviewing President Trump’s first nine months in office, an article in the October 2017 issue of the otherwise liberal Atlantic concluded that despite Trump’s breaking established norms, threats, and mean-spirited style, institutions had held pretty well, and, hence, one-party dominance had not done a serious damage to the constitutional order. A year later, another article in the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic again arrived at the same conclusion. Despite the realignment of Congressional Republicans under the Trump banner, the judicial branch has held up, though bruised by the relentless attacks from the president. Attorney General Sessions is still in the Department of Justice and special counselor Mueller continues to do his investigation. So, if your standard for judging the endurance and strength of checks and balances is one out of three branches doing its job, then we are not yet in crisis territory. But the current state in this particular area is not reassuring for the future. Should Republicans hold on to the House and the Senate, their loyalty to President Trump, who has assiduously campaigned on their behalf, will compel them even more to shield him from any check. Given his inclination and habit to run all things as his personal interests dictate as well as his fondness to cultivate a personality cult (the antithesis of what a democratic leader ought to do), there is no guaranty what the quality of American democracy will be at the end of his tenure.
If still these concerns do not rise to the point that a bi-partisan government is needed, what about the possible erosion of fundamental American values? Abraham Lincoln once said that the Constitution and Law were supposed to be America’s political religion. As president, Trump might have not damaged the Constitution and the justice system by action but he has certainly attacked the ideas on which the Constitution and Law were founded. He has questioned the objectivity of a federal judge because of his ethnic background, has called upon the DOJ to prosecute his political opponents, and has threatened to take executive action against the birthright of citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment. He has attacked the freedom of speech by declaring the press to be the enemy of the people; and he has done pretty much the same in regards to his political opponents. He has been divisive from the start of his presidency by catering only to the political spirits and politics of his base and has called those who demonstrate against him to be a mob. Thus, he has failed to act as the president of all Americans.
The Constitution does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, race, color, or religious background as to who is or can be an American. Moreover, the confidence of this Republic in its capacity to take in people from foreign lands and turn them into loyal citizens is such that we can demonstrate our Jewish, Greek, Irish, Italian and any other ethnic affiliation and still be considered American patriots. And yet, Donald Trump has demonized and dehumanized Latin American and Muslim people and has offended them as unfit to join this country. Furthermore, his rhetoric, willingly or not, has given voice to white nationalism and has emboldened fringe groups that stand for hate and an illiberal order.
Under any other administration, a caravan of hungry, destitute and desperate migrants would have been handled by the appropriate authorities as a matter of law and order with very little said by the president. Instead, the leader of a country of immigrants chooses to name these people invaders and a danger to the country. And for no other purpose but to manipulate public sentiment through fear mongering he has ordered the military to intervene in a clearly civilian matter of law enforcement. If that’s how he understands the purpose of the military, what other uses is he likely to have in mind? I don’t need to remind anyone that once the military is called out of the barracks to intervene in domestic affairs, we have entered a slippery slope toward suppression.
Despite all its flaws, America is a unique experiment in making a nation out of people of all kinds of different backgrounds. The national motto is still E Pluribus Unum, “out of many one.”
One party’s economic policies can make us prosperous or may give us judges that rule in favor of our partisan values. If we lose, however, the foundational values that have inspired and guided this country, none of these gains will matter.
So, to my initial question as to what these elections are all about, my answer is: In order to re-affirm the fundamental values this republic has set in its best moments.
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