Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
America a quarter of a millennium ago was where the words of the European Enlightenment became flesh. In the 13 colonies’ declaration of independence, the dreams of the new age’s rationalists, free thinkers and anti-monarchists were made actual. Power comes from the people, they said. Rulers must govern with the consent of the governed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” they asserted. They were right, which is why Britain had lost the battle for America’s soul before the first cannonballs were exchanged. Little is self-evident today to Americans, except that they cannot agree on what they are celebrating.
That America’s semiquincentennial is a flop may be an accident of timing. The bicentennial was very different. Those 1976 celebrations were led by Gerald Ford, an unexpected president who was modesty personified. “The excitement of this occasion is that they [the declaration’s principles] still work.” Ford was referring to the resignation two years earlier of his boss, Richard Nixon, to avoid impeachment over the Watergate scandal. The system had successfully checked executive power. What better moment to light the fireworks?
Half a century later, Nixon is depicted by JD Vance, today’s vice-president, as victim of the “deep state”. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said last week. There was nothing deep-state about Nixon’s downfall. He resigned only when he realised that his Republican colleagues were boarding the impeachment train. The US Supreme Court precipitated that moment when it ordered Nixon to publish his incriminating Oval Office tapes.
In another respect, however, Vance is correct. Watergate today would be drowned out by competing scandals. Much of what Donald Trump does is comparable or worse. Take what looks to most like his trading of regulatory favours for gifts. In implicit exchange for a takeover approval, Paramount, which owns the CBS news channel and is about to take over CNN, paid Trump $16mn to settle a lawsuit over a routine editing of an election interview with Kamala Harris. Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who is seeking federal contracts for his space venture, paid $40mn for a fawning documentary of first lady Melania Trump that few watched.
Trump operates an apparent market in presidential pardons. People who donate to him have been forgiven for crimes of embezzlement, money laundering and funnelling money to sanctioned regimes, including Iran. Hundreds were forgiven for storming Capitol Hill to overthrow an election. Nixon’s operatives burgled the Democratic Party’s headquarters to discover their campaign plans but Nixon tried nothing close to January 6. His true crime was the lengths to which he went to cover it up. Trump does not even bother to conceal. He makes no pretence of abiding by the US constitution’s emoluments clause.
Two things have changed. First, today’s Republicans are a very different breed to their 1970s forebears. Though Nixon had been re-elected in a landslide, he had nothing like Trump’s grip over the party. Second, today’s Supreme Court is Trump’s enabler. His abuse of executive power is the closest America has come in 250 years to the whims of a Hanoverian monarch. That is why opposition to Trump marches under the “No Kings” banner.
On Saturday, Trump is expected to give a speech to the “Freedom 250” rally on the Washington Ellipse. In addition to F-35 flyovers, the day will be commemorated by what the White House has billed as history’s largest firework display — 850,000 pyrotechnics will be set off. Trump will be the main entertainment. A long roster of performers has boycotted an event they believe has been hijacked by the president’s personal branding. As well as donations from the likes of the cage wrestling UFC, the defence logistics company Palantir and ExxonMobil, Trump has taken control of taxpayer money that Congress awarded to the official but largely invisible “America 250” commission. An event that was meant to celebrate an exceptional nation has thus been cornered by one man.
At 250, the US system has outlasted most empires. The founders might have been astonished to learn it has survived this long. At just 1,320 words, the declaration ranks as one of the great statements in history. Many on America’s left believe it was a hypocritical charter drawn up by slave owners. Many on the right see it as a revelation of God’s providence. But surveys show that the typical American has a better grasp of the nation’s founding ideals and hypocrisies. Most deserve a better celebration than they will be getting.
[email protected]
Credit: Source link
