This is another crack at an editorial that never took off. I was teaching Norman and Plantagenet England at the University of Richmond and the Plantagenet portion spoke to me in a way it hadn’t theretofore. President Supersize Me was much on my mind because of his “acquittal” in the impeachment trial early in February 2020. Henry III of England seemed a little “Trumpy” to me in ways big and small; moreover, the sense of limited executive authority as understood by Simon de Montfort and the rebelling barons, to say nothing of their courage and commitment to their cause, offered a counterpoint to the behavior of the national GOP, a contrast further sharpened by subsequent events.
I put a thing together and sent it to a couple of outlets (The Washington Post, The Virginian-Pilot), who passed on it but were nice about it.
A Medieval Presidency?
2020 seems to have completed President Trump’s seduction of the Republican Party. The unwillingness of GOP senators and representatives to rebuke Trump in the impeachment process for disregarding rule of law, violation of constitutional principles, and flouting of political norms was telling. Now congressional Republicans largely stand aside while the president removes inspectors general, interferes in judicial processes, smears his predecessor with baseless conspiracy theories, and employs the military against peaceful protestors.
A cottage industry devoted to finding historical analogies for Trump’s misbehavior has emerged. Does he belong with the twentieth century’s totalitarian despots or does his clownishness place him alongside tin-pot dictators of banana republics? Or is he a throwback to the Ur-tyrant of the American mind, England’s George III?
One of George’s medieval predecessors may be a more apposite historical precursor. Henry III (r. 1216-72) was the successor to John of Magna Carta fame and father of Edward I, the Longshanks, the opponent of Braveheart’s William Wallace. Henry had exaggerated personal qualities. He loved sumptuous living and was enchanted by construction projects. He built castles and palaces and rebuilt and enlarged Westminster Abbey, all the while fussing over furnishings. He judged character poorly and surrounded himself with foreign favorites, to his English barons’ displeasure. He took advice only from a small, intimate circle except when he dispensed even with this and made decisions unilaterally. His autocratic tendencies were barely concealed.
His arbitrariness and profligacy reached a crisis when he agreed to purchase the kingdom of Sicily for his younger son. Unable to raise enough money, he asked his barons for an extraordinary tax. This request engendered baronial resistance led by his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. The barons compelled Henry to accede under oath – a grave commitment in the medieval mind – to the Provisions of Oxford (1258). Henry was obliged to consult a council of barons on state matters and to “parlay” three times a year with a larger council in a “parliament.” The immediate crisis passed, Henry voided his promise and left his opponents with little choice but to submit or fight. The barons bested Henry at Lewes (1264). Henry and his son Edward were captured, the latter made hostage to ensure the king’s good behavior. Simon and the barons became England’s de facto rulers for fifteen months.
Political poems reflecting the baronial viewpoint appeared, the most famous perhaps “The Song of Lewes.” The “Song” underscores how a king must govern for the community’s benefit and honor the rule of law: “We give first place to the community; we say also that the law rules over the king’s dignity; for we believe that the law is the light, without which. . .he who rules will wander from the right path. . .” The poem’s broader community was the king’s natural counsellor: “Therefore let the community of the kingdom advise; let it be known what the generality [of the people] thinks to whom their own laws are best known.” Indeed, the leader’s submission to the law would not weaken but ennoble him: “And this constraint [of a free law] is not one of slavery but is rather an enlarging of the kingly faculty. . .” The “Song” emphasizes where the ruler’s focus should be: “And let the king never set his private interest before that of the community. . .” “He who does not know how to rule himself will be a bad ruler over others. . .” The “Song” leaves a disquieting impression: The barons, many of them little more than semi-literate armed thugs, surpassed the Solons of today’s GOP in understanding rule of law and separation and balance of powers.
The story has a coda. Edward broke his confinement, rallied his father’s supporters, and defeated the barons at Evesham (1265). Simon died in battle and his corpse was hewn to pieces. For the earl’s supporters, his remains became sanctified and the field where he perished hallowed ground. Miracle-stories spread. Henry could not abide this and in the Dictum of Kenilworth (1265) mandated that “[t]he injurious damnable acts of Simon and his accomplices. . .are nullified and have no force” and that “the vain and fatuous miracles told of him by others shall not at any time pass any lips. And that the king shall agree strictly to forbid this under pain of corporal punishment.” Simon’s rectitude, courage, and commitment to good governance were “fake news” to be suppressed. Henry had learned no lesson, though at least the barons had tried to instruct him. Would that the same could be said of today’s GOP. The Republican Party seems capable only of narrowly transactional impulses. Its abdication of its responsibility to the community leaves that community of voters to restrain Trump by every legal means and to ensure his departure from office.
[1] “The Song of Lewes,” in E. Amt (ed.), Medieval England 1000-1500: A Reader (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2001), pp. 253-61.
[2] “The Miracles of Simon de Montfort,” in E. Amt and K. Allen Smith (eds), Medieval England 500-1500: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 248-50. “Dictum of Kenilworth 1265,” The National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/magna-carta/dictum-of-kenilworth/ [accessed 16 February 2020]).
I continued my survey of the Bluegrass’s print journalism in late September 2019. The Ukraine story was developing by the hour and dominated cable news. The (Elizabethtown) News-Enterprise, a regional daily, approached the story unconventionally. By picking up an Associated Press story by Dmytro Vlasov and presenting no other coverage, the only news its readers received was that the Ukrainian president was miffed by the release of the written record of his conversation with President CrowdStrike. The accumulating substance of the affair wasn’t mentioned. Welcome to the “news” in Red State America, I suppose. To The (Elizabethtown) News-Enterprise’s credit, it printed my critique of its news judgement.
Dmytro Vlasov, “Ukrainian Leader Bristles at Release of Trump Transcript,” The (Elizabethtown) News-Enterprise, 27 September 2019, A6; Associated Press, 26 September 2019 (https://subscriber.thenewsenterprise.com/node/426409/, ). The above link leads to the e-edition of article in The (Elizabethtown) News Enterprise. Access to this is likely limited by the newspaper’s paywall. If the paper posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The following link is to the Associated Press’s online version (https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-international-news-joe-biden-politics-6454968c0e3642b59ffbece30abeefd4).
“Questions Selection of Ukrainian Story,” The (Elizabethtown) News-Enterprise, 7 October 2019, A6 (www.thenewsenterprise.com/opinon/letters_to_editor/letters-to-the-editor-oct/article_0ef65466-8050-5176-8371-7cb1944d53f4.html).
By the time I departed for the biannual hajj to the Bluegrass, The Gaslighter in Chief’s conduct had become so egregious that Nancy Pelosi could no longer temporize on doing something about it. I had my customary I-64 sleepover in Lexington and bought a copy of The Lexington Herald-Leader. The paper had picked up The New York Times’ reporting by Nicholas Fandos on the speaker’s announcement of the opening of an impeachment inquiry regarding President Perfect Conservation’s alleged shakedown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I did a riff on Representative Adam Schiff’s soliloquy regarding what is “okay.” The Lexington Herald-Leader was not sufficiently amused to print it.
Nicholas Fandos, “House Opens Impeachment Inquiry of President Trump,” The Lexington Herald-Leader, 25 September 2019, 1A, 2A (www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/democrats-impeachment-trump.html). If Lexington Herald-Leader posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The New York Times.
This past week’s torrent of events demands an updating of Representative Adam Schiff’s litany of questions to his colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee on 28 March. The GOP members of the House and Senate should ask themselves whether it is okay that a president’s personal attorney dabble in foreign affairs outside of official channels. Is it okay that a president pressure a foreign head of state to gather and perhaps even to concoct damaging information on a domestic political opponent? Is it okay that a president, whether tacitly or explicitly, dangle the provision of congressionally appropriated assistance as a carrot or the withholding of it as a stick to compel the head of state to bow to his wishes? Is it okay that a White House flout the whistleblower statutes and stonewall Congress in its performance of responsible oversight of the executive branch? Would any of this be okay if done by any Democratic president or White House, past or future? The nation waits and watches. It is a sad reality that the GOP’s answer may already be easily enough guessed.
Muddying the findings of the Mueller report became a cottage industry in GOP World. If obfuscation is the game, who better to enlist than Victor Davis Hanson? Ever the good soldier, he applied himself with gusto to a willful misreading – if there was a reading – of the Special Counsel’s conclusions. This was not a difficult letter to write, since George Terwilliger III had served as Mr. Hanson’s warmup act.
Victor Davis Hanson, “Progressives Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 May 2019, A9; Yahoo, 9 May 2019 (https://news.yahoo.com/progressives-face-bleak-post-mueller-103001666.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared on Yahoo.
“Hanson Misrepresents Mueller Report Findings,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 16 May 2019, A10 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/letters-to-the-editor-may-16-2019-hanson-misrepresents-mueller-report-findings/article_26be70e6-9913-57d2-88a5-e83a1a4b74ca.html).
Former Attorney General William Barr had his defenders. Whether Thorazine should be prescribed to address their sapiential disarrangement and their tenuous contact with reality makes for good cocktail conversation. Maybe they’re just cynical and dishonest. Whatever the case, onetime acting Attorney General George T. Terwilliger III’s portrayal of William Barr as a paragon of rectitude and the lion of rule of law was perhaps the zenith of Barr apologetics. Then again, Mr. Terwilliger’s balletic skirting of inconvenient, displeasing facts is perhaps a primer on the genesis of the proclivities fueling Trumpism. The Former Fabricator in Chief is not the aberration that GOP worthies would have everyone believe he is. A letter was sent to The Washington Post.
George Terwilliger III, “Barr Acted by the Book,” The Washington Post, 19 April 2019, A15 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-barr-did-this-nation-a-great-service-he-shouldnt-be-attacked/2019/04/18/a2e83760-6221-11e9-9412-daf3d2e67c6d_story.html).
“Fallout from the Mueller Report,” The Washington Post, 24 April 2019, A22 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mueller-report-is-out-now-what/2019/04/23/cbcaab9a-6537-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html).
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal. By all accounts its reporting of news is good, even after having passed under the Mordorian Murdoch regime, but its editorial and opinion pages are, as the kids say, cra-cra, pure, unadulterated, high quality (which means low quality, sapientially speaking) movement-conservative fantasy and supply-side theology. Not wanting digits added to my blood pressure needlessly, I avoid it. I have bought a copy occasionally by accident or for lack of another national newspaper. That’s probably what happened here. When I purchase a newspaper, I want my money’s worth, so I went to the “comforting fiction” pages and was not disappointed. An unsigned editorial and an op-ed by Kimberley A. Strassel were bent upon perpetuating The Conspiracy Theorist in Chief’s assertion that the Special Counsel’s probe was part and parcel of the “Russia hoax” predicated on the mistreatment of onetime National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Ugh. I sent a letter with no expectation it would ever see the light of day. The Wall Street Journal didn’t disappoint.
“The Flynn Entrapment,” The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2018, A16 (www.wsj.com/articles/the-flynn-entrapment-11544658915).
Kimberley A. Strassel, “Checking Robert Mueller,” The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2018, A15 (www.wsj.com/articles/checking-robert-mueller-11544745831).
Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI can be equated with “entrapment” only through willful self-deception, the shoveling of manifold facts into the memory hole.
One must first forget that Flynn was informed beforehand that the focus of the interview on 24 January 2017 would be his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and that Flynn himself signaled his sense that the FBI was already privy to what had been said. He in effect received a take-home examination to which he knew the correct answer and prevaricated anyway. Into the pit of forgetfulness then must be cast Flynn’s dishonesty with Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Sean Spicer in the interval between his chat with Kislyak on 26 December 2016 and the FBI interview. Next to be consigned to oblivion are the potential charges against Flynn for his pre-election dealings with Turkey. One must also ignore Flynn’s grasping for immunity in March 2017 in exchange for testimony before US Senate and House committees because he had “a story to tell.” One finally must purge from consciousness the stated reason for Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration: his dishonesty. To accept that Flynn has been shabbily treated, one must nearly drink the river Lethe dry.
Nor can it be credibly asserted that Flynn was merely doing his job. He had the relevant conversation with Kislyak during the transition just as President Obama was imposing sanctions on Russia for its meddling in the election. There is only one president at a time and Flynn was undermining him, conduct that becomes even more troubling as signs emerge of conversations between Flynn and Kislyak before the 2016 election to arrange a geopolitical “grand bargain.”[1] In light of his misconduct, Flynn has enjoyed gentle treatment.
[1] David Corn and Dan Friedman, “Did Michael Flynn Try to Strike a Grand Bargain with Moscow as It Attacked the 2016 Election?” Mother Jones, 13 December 2018 (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/michael-flynn-contacts-russia-campaign-robert-mueller/ [accessed 16 December 2018]).
President Sword Dance is a transparently defective human being, but that’s not to suggest that he doesn’t possess a singular talent. His capacity to up the ante on public degeneracy is nonpareil. In autumn 2018, the Saudis, apparently by order of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, converted their consulate in Istanbul into an abattoir. American resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi was slaughtered, perhaps vivisected, because he had offended the prince’s delicate sensibilities (i.e., spoken truth to power). President Glow-Orb’s whitewashing of the matter was an appalling example of the potential convergence of his fanboy-level adoration of autocrats, his personal financial interests, and his transactional understanding of all relationships, whether personal, business, or diplomatic. Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung – reporters for The Washington Post – covered Mr. Trump’s apologia for Mr. Bin Salman; the story was picked up by The Richmond Times-Dispatch and a letter was dispatched.
Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris, and Karen DeYoung, “Trump Says Case Closed in Death of Khashoggi,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 November 2018, B5; “Trump Calls Saudi Arabia a ‘Great Ally,’ Discounts Crown Prince’s Responsibility for Khashoggi’s Death,” The Washington Post, 20 November 2018 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-saudia-arabias-denial-about-the-planning-of-khashoggis-death/2018/11/20/b64d2cc6-eceb-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The Washington Post.
Any uncertainty about President Trump’s affinity for authoritarians vanished with his bestowal of diplomatic absolution onto Mohammed bin Salman in the death of Jamal Khashoggi. His disjointed jeremiad – evocative of a college sophomore’s caffeine-fueled all-nighter with a superhero comic book’s sensibility – exposes his moral bankruptcy. His conduct appears even more tawdry if, as reported, the statement’s release proceeded despite a CIA report implicating bin Salman; furthermore, the president’s alleged willingness to surrender Fethullah Gulen to Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan to benefit bin Salman is superlatively cynical [1].
A thread runs through this: Trump’s incapacity to view any relationship through a non-transactional lens. Economic advantage must not be the sole driver of foreign policy. Soft power and moral suasion, the will and stature to condemn moral enormities credibly, are crucial and Trump squanders this. Why, moreover, does Trump deem bin Salman indispensable? There is no dearth of other Saudi princelings not ensnared in murder and mayhem. Does Trump’s official relationship with the Saudis meander into his personal affairs? Jared Kushner’s diplomatic canoodling with bin Salman, his pursuit of loans from Qatar, his support of the Qatar blockade, and bin Salman’s belief he has Kushner “in his pocket” [2] are not hallmarks of a diplomatic fair broker, nor is Trump’s assertion that “. . .I like the Saudis. I make money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. . . .They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.” [3] Trump’s recent denial of business dealings in the kingdom invites public scrutiny of his finances.
Trump bookends apologias for authoritarian rulers with bullying of allies and further attenuates the nation’s influence. Implicit in Guy Lawson’s analysis of Trump’s treatment of Canada is a truth Trump and his GOP enablers should ponder: Bullies rarely feel remorse while the bullied never forget indignities rained on them. [4]
[1] Tucker Higgins, “To Ease Turkish Anger over Journalist’s Killing, White House Considers Extraditing an Enemy of Erdogan: NBC,” CNBC, 16 October 2018 (www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/trump-admin-considers-khashoggi-murder-trying-to-extradite-gulen.html [accessed 22 November 2018]).
[2] Julian Borger, “A Tale of Two Houses: How Jared Kushner Fuelled the Trump-Saudi Love-In,” The Guardian, 16 October 2018 (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/16/jared-kushner-trump-saudi-khashoggi-mbs [accessed 23 November 2018]); Jessica Kwong, “Jared Kushner Backed Qatar Blockade a Month After Qataris Wouldn’t Finance His Property: Report,” Newsweek, 2 March 2018 (www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-backed-Qatar-blockade-after-Qataris-wouldnt-finance-his-property-828847 [accessed 23 November 2018]); Alex Emmons, Ryan Grim, and Clayton Swisher, “Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was ‘In His Pocket,’” The Intercept, 21 March 2018 [ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/, (accessed 23 November 2018)].
[3] John Kruzel, “Donald Trump’s Claim of ‘No Financial Interests’ in Saudi Arabia? That’s Half True at Best,” Politifact, 18 October 2018 (www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/oct/18/donald-trump/donald-trumps-claim-no-financial-interests-saudi-a/ [accessed 20 November 2018]). [4] Guy Lawson, “First Canada Tried to Charm Trump. Now It’s Fighting Back,” The New York Times Magazine, 9 June 2018 (www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/magazine/justin-trudeau-chrystia-freeland-trade-canada-us-.html [accessed 23-xi-18]).
It was inevitable that the letter-writing would lead to tinkering with an editorial. This spur for this virgin effort was The Grand Prevaricator’s tapping of the bellicose John Bolton as his National Security Adviser. This was not the choice of a chief executive determined to pursue a reasoned, sober foreign policy. Many hoped that President Stable Genius would never face a crisis for fear of an awful outcome. The installation of the incessantly saber-rattling Mr. Bolton magnified the chances for the genesis of crises where none need exist.
The piece is essentially a call for a Republican, any Republican, to restrain Mr. Trump. No one in the national GOP had done so to this point. The Richmond Times-Dispatch justifiably passed on it because it was double the length of a typical editorial. A pitch was then made to The Huffington Post, but nothing came of it. I then set the essay aside and never returned to it.
Freedland, Trump, Bolton, Lee, Chirac.
While in London in late 2017 I was reading local newspapers and stumbled across an editorial by a favorite writer, Jonathan Freedland (“The Year of Trump Has Laid Bare the US Constitution’s Serious Flaws,” The Guardian, 30 December 2017). As the first year of the Trump administration lurched toward its close, Mr. Freedland reflected on a book he had written two decades ago in which he had professed his admiration for the ideals enshrined in the United States’ founding documents and for the intricate constitutional mechanism devised by the nation’s founders (Bring Home the Revolution: the Case for a British Republic [London: Fourth Estate Ltd., 1998]). In Mr. Freedland’s view, the colonies had purloined a revolution that by right belonged to the English, hence his call to “bring home the revolution” and reshape the United Kingdom’s government on the American pattern. On 2017’s penultimate day, Mr. Freedland was disillusioned. The first year of the Trump presidency had revealed inherent flaws in the American constitutional order and he despaired of its capacity, despite its manifold merits, to correct itself.
Saddened by Mr. Freedland’s loss of faith, I sent a letter to the newspaper, perhaps as much to “buck up” myself as Mr. Freedland and to assure our transatlantic admirer that, in the words of a British comedy troupe, “we’re not dead yet” (“Trump’s ‘Clown Fascism’ and the US Constitution,” The Guardian, 2 January 2018, 29). The letter underscored the potency of the “resistance” to Mr. Trump and identified the ultimate corrective to his misrule: the electoral repudiation of his GOP enablers in the 2018 midterms, the removal of Mr. Trump through the ballot box in 2020, and a gradual restoration of normative political practice.
In the months since my sojourn among our British cousins, the United States’ circumstance has gravely worsened and Mr. Freedland’s outlining of a pair of defects in American governance grows in resonance. He asserted first that the proper functioning of the American constitutional system depends upon the election of a chief executive with personal integrity and an unwavering commitment to the public weal. By this standard, it is now incontrovertible that the incorrigible Mr. Trump is a lost cause. Appeal neither to reason nor common decency gives him pause. He stands as a moral and ethical cypher, a man deficient in understanding and allergic to principle, a living syllabus of our darker impulses, the untrammeled national id exposed and unleashed.
Mr. Trump now jettisons one after the another the members of the small and shrinking coterie of “adults” supposed to blunt his impulsivity. He liberates himself from relevant experience, informed opinion, and sober analysis. Still more vexing is his selection of former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton as his National Security Adviser. Mr. Trump is installing in this critical post the most unreconstructed, most unapologetic of the neoconservative Iraq War deadenders. A probable Islamophobe and a certain saber-rattler unable to pass the scrutiny of confirmation by a Republican Senate in 2005, Mr. Bolton was a leading light in the Project for a New American Century and among its members who ultimately insinuated themselves deeply into President George W. Bush’s administration. He was a signatory to this cabal’s infamous 1998 open letter exhorting President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power, three years before the 9/11 attacks and five years before Saddam Hussein’s mythical weapons of mass destruction became the pretext for the greatest blunder in modern American foreign policy, a misstep whose toll in lost American credibility on the world stage still mounts.
Mr. Trump on his own abrogates American leadership in the community of nations and, when abroad, inflicts misinformed diatribes on America’s allies and seems at his ease only in the company of despots and thugs, a sadly embarrassing affront to every thinking American. Mr. Bolton will neither restrain Mr. Trump nor offer him sage counsel and likely will only encourage Mr. Trump to intermingle American foreign policy with his vanity, vindictiveness, and projection. One must wonder whether Mr. Trump’s personal peccadilloes – his ceaseless need to shift the narrative from his past and present transgressions – will become a driving force in foreign affairs. Be this as may, the elevation of Mr. Bolton near the seat of power pushes the hands of the doomsday clock a few clicks nearer to midnight.
Mr. Trump’s manifest deficiency as chief executive leads to Mr. Freedland’s other critique of the state of play in American governance, his understanding that the constitutional mechanism runs smoothly when political groups operate in good faith, accept the legitimacy of their opponents, and, at any critical juncture, prioritize the national interest above narrow partisan advantage. Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party is a paragon of political virtue but their defects are asymmetrical, the sins of the GOP active and those of the Democrats reactive. The Democrats in any event are in power in no corner of government. Restraint on an unfettered and perhaps unbalanced executive must come from the GOP. A few months back, one could hope that a drubbing in the 2018 midterms and a few electoral cycles in the political wilderness – an overdue pause for introspection – might return the Republican Party to itself. Mr. Trump’s mercurial conduct unfortunately eliminates the luxury of waiting for a gradual political realignment. Action is imperative. It is incumbent on the governing party to act. The Republican Party must demonstrate that, unlike Mr. Trump, it is not a lost cause.
The signs on this front are not encouraging. GOP senators and congressmen have by and large maintained a studied silence in the face of Mr. Trump’s antics. A few Republican senators – Messrs. McCain, Flake, Sasse, Corker, Graham – have from time to time uttered fine words but a concrete act to constrain Mr. Trump’s misbehavior and malfeasance is nowhere in evidence. The GOP seems to have forgotten a fundamental truth. Retired Sen. Harry Reid has recounted a reminder the late Sen. Robert Byrd gave his colleagues: “I don’t serve under the president; I serve with the president” (Carl Hulse, “Senator’s Farewell: ‘I Just Shake My Head,’” The New York Times, 24 March 2018, A11 [www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/us/politics/harry-reid-leaves-washington.html]). Do Republicans not recall that the legislature is a coequal branch of government and enjoys pride of place in the Constitution? The federal government is not a parliamentary system, though the GOP sometimes seemingly wishes it were. The political calculus in the US Senate is uncomplicated: A handful of Republican votes in concert with Democrats can serve as a bulwark against Mr. Trump’s excesses. This would be less an act of courage than a minimal declaration of fealty to the American constitutional system.
Should Republicans, nevertheless, require an example of political courage to emulate, they need not look far nor to the distant past. In 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee cast the lone dissenting vote in the House against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and there was nary a nay registered in the Senate. Her opposition sprang not from pacifism but from her conviction that the legislature should not abdicate its oversight of the executive in making the most profound decision, to commit the nation’s treasure and its youth to armed conflict. She refused to grant the executive a blank check. To paraphrase Martin Luther, there she stood for she could do no other. The fullness of time has vindicated her adherence to principle. Would that a handful of GOP senators might muster the fortitude of a Barbara Lee.
Despite Mr. Trump’s willful misconduct, the nation still has friends abroad. The stock of goodwill has not yet been exhausted. Hope endures that the United States will return to the first principles that, while often observed imperfectly, made the American constitutional system admired and emulated. Jonathan Freedland’s distress at our present predicament underscores a useful truism: The outsider sometimes perceives us with greater clarity than we see ourselves. Friends also sometimes offer well-meaning advice, counsel that should not be summarily dismissed. The document though which thirteen colonies dissolved its bond to the British crown underscored the importance “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” as the nascent nation embarked on a fateful path. Perhaps in this moment America’s leadership should declaim less and listen more to what the world is saying to it. Nicholas Kristof recently acknowledged his experience of déjà vu, a feeling that 2018 seems uncomfortably like 2002 and 2003 (“I’m Worried Now, as Before the Iraq War,” New York Times, 22 March 2018, A21 [www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/opinion/iraq-war-north-korea-iran.html]). Mr. Kristof is not alone in this. The American political memory can be unforgivably short. As the drumbeat for intervention in Iraq moved to a crescendo, the late French President Jacques Chirac, a man with an abiding affection for America, warned that the country was on the cusp of a potentially momentous mistake. GOP congressmen in response replaced french-fries with “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria and the nation careered toward a grand foreign policy debacle. Must this partisan thickness be repeated? The time for both Democratic and Republican legislators to exercise the prerogatives and responsibilities of their offices is now. This cannot and must not be left to the election.