Fate of the Republic: it’s time to address the truth of Trump

A protester sits in the Senate chamber on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Whatever opinion one may hold about Donald Trump as a person or as a politician, about his policy platform, his political style or his actions as US President, his refusal to accept the outcome of the election held last November and his incitement of the mob on Thursday, to march on the Capitol and confront “weak Republicans” made him a serious threat to the US constitution and the integrity of the American republic.

That members of his own cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office and replace him — for the final two weeks of his term — with Vice-President Mike Pence has to stand as the ultimate indictment of his conduct. Joe Biden has now been confirmed by congress. Trump has stated there will be a smooth transition, but still denies the outcome of the election.

Highly credible public intellectual Fred Kaplan wrote in Slate on Wednesday: “It is now clear that American democracy is too much at risk if Donald Trump remains President for the two weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration. There is a way to remove him quickly, if there’s a will — invoking the 25th Amendment. Trump’s behaviour on Wednesday — his incitement of violence, his expression of ‘love’ for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, his continued propagation of the lie that his ‘sacred landslide election victory’ was stolen — could justify his ouster.

“In an astonishing statement, released hours after the rioting, the National Association of Manufacturers — a leading group of big business leaders that has enthusiastically supported Trump in the past — stated, ‘Vice-President Pence … should seriously consider working with the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy’.”

That’s where things got to in Washington.

Yet the election showed Trump has massive popular support in the US. His partisans insist he has notable achievements to his credit in his one term as President. Assuming one believes in the democratic process, both the opinions about Trump and the votes warrant detailed analysis in their own right. None of that, however, has any bearing on his conduct since November 3, which is without precedent in American politics and without any justification. It has brought the country to the brink of its most serious crisis since the defection of the Confederate states from the Union, in defence of slavery, in 1861.

Just as, in 2015-16, very few people took seriously, until it was too late, the idea that an individual of the character of Trump could possibly be elected by the American people to be their President, so it would seem the majority of us assumed that, if defeated in the 2020 election — as he clearly was — he would bow to the laws of democracy and hand over power. We have been proven wrong yet again. It is this specific matter and its implications, not his record in office over four years, that now demands critical analysis. For, make no mistake, Trump is putting the traditions of representative and constitutional government, which began in the classical world, in real danger; even as malign dictatorial regimes circle ominously like vultures — China and Russia foremost among them.

The day Trump was elected in 2016, I wrote in the opinion pages of this newspaper that the manner of his ascent and the nature of his rhetorical style looked disturbingly likely to make him a danger to the American constitution. We have now reached that point, in the weeks after November 3, 2020 and emphatically on January 6, 2021. Yet a bewildering number not only of pro-Trump Americans but of Australians have continued to give credence to the preposterous notion the election was “stolen” by the Democrats and that it is Trump who has been standing up for the probity of the electoral process. I number some such pro-Trump conspiracy theorists among my long-time friends and it’s clear that no small number of readers of this newspaper adhere to similar opinions. That problem must, therefore, be addressed.

When we are confronted by a mass of apparently contradictory facts or claims, our minds understandably flounder in coming to sound conclusions. The more so when our passions are already inflamed, as they have clearly been in the case of Trump for years. But where we cannot vouch for many of the facts, we must base our judgments not on our passionate opinions but on a series of proxies for systematic inquiry. In the matter of the election, those insisting Trump won ought to have asked themselves, in the days and weeks since, the following questions:

1. Given the way the electoral system actually works, how could the Democrats possibly have rigged it on a national scale? Even an incumbent federal government would not have been able to do this and Trump was the incumbent.

2. If the evidence of fraud was as widespread as the Trump camp claimed, how could it be that court after court, right up to the Supreme Court, dismissed the allegations as without merit or substance — even where the judges themselves were Republicans or Trump appointees?

3. If the fraud had been so egregious as to assign seven million more votes to Biden than to Trump, why had this not become a scandal on a national scale, in which the competitive media scrambled to publish the truth — as it had, for instance, in 1971 with the Pentagon Papers or in 1972-74 in the Watergate case?

4. Even if the Democrats had somehow organised a vast and tightly held conspiracy from which not a single troubled staffer or political office holder had defected and spoken up, how could it be the case that even Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh, William Barr and Mitch McConnell — Republicans to a man — would, one after another, come out and declare that the evidence for fraud was lacking and Biden had won the election?

5. Finally, if there was any credible evidence that the election had been a fraud, why would Trump’s own Vice-President and cabinet members, over the past week, have contemplated invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office before inauguration day, as a threat to the constitution?

The fact is Trump’s shameless demagoguery and obstruction are being resisted by every authoritative institution in the US. But his rancorous base remains unreconciled and rebellious. He himself remains obdurate. And those conditions continue to put public order, the viability of elections and the future of Western democracy in peril. The fractious mob storming the Capitol was a symptom of what is, in fact, a disease in the American body politic. That disease should greatly concern us all.

There was a time when the study of the founding and the fates of the Athenian and Roman republics was a core part of a liberal arts degree on Western civilisation. What we are witnessing right now in the US shows why it should again become so. When Aristotle wrote his classic study of politics, some 2350 years ago, he used as case materials the constitutions and histories of some 158 Greek city states going back several centuries. His reasoning about the nature of politics had a major influence on the framing of the American constitution. So did the history of the Roman republic (510–31 BCE).

Aristotle argued that an enduring republic required a balance between democracy (popular participation and representation), oligarchy (expertise, serious stakes in the polity and elite gravitas) and monarchy (strong executive authority) if it was to avoid degeneration. It also required a reasonable degree of civic equality and economic equity among its citizens. If the balance was too much disturbed, crises would trigger regression to mob rule, tyranny or oppressive aristocracy. All this is at stake in America right now.

Astonished by the assault on the Capitol, the congress itself, Joe Biden remarked: “At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault unlike anything we have seen in modern times; an assault on the citadel of liberty, the Capitol itself … Let me be very clear: the scenes and chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are. What we are seeing are a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent; it’s disorder, it’s chaos. It borders on sedition, and it must end now.”

On the same day, former Republican president George W Bush wrote: “I am appalled by the reckless behaviour of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions and our law enforcement.”

“Some political leaders” plainly meant Trump and his coterie. While Biden’s remarks eerily resemble the rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party about the democratic dissidents in Hong Kong in 2019-20, the difference between what happened in Hong Kong and what is happening in America could hardly be greater — and must remain so.

What is happening in Hong Kong is the suppression of democracy. What is happening in America is blatant defiance of what was, in fact, a majestic democratic process that the defeated incumbent refuses to accept and against which his supporters, in some cases, are openly threatening violence, with slogans like “Certify Trump or get Lynched by Patriots” and wild assertions that Republicans who “stabbed Trump in the back” should face “execution by firing squad”.

“If you don’t get the right answer today, you come back with your rifles!” the mob were exhorted in Washington DC before they assaulted the congress building.

Eric Trump, one of the President’s sons, issued a thinly veiled threat to the Republican caucus on January 6: “Today, Republicans, you get to pick a side. Choose wisely.” At Fox News, no less, widely respected anchor Chris Wallace called the assault on congress “the rule of the mob versus the rule of law and the constitution” and openly stated that it had been incited by Trump himself “filling a crowd with misstatements … that have been absolutely shredded” by the courts. Such, clearly, is the weight of serious opinion. But the rancour runs deep and it would be naive indeed to think that it will all melt away either before or after Biden is — as he presumably will be — inaugurated lawfully on January 20.

It was said by many over the past four years that Trump was a symptom rather than a cause of underlying maladies in the US body politic. That’s quite clearly the case. This is where the history of the late Roman republic remains such a sobering study. In 2016, I compared Trump with the Roman conservative dictator Sulla. Right now, he might more usefully be compared with the conspirator and malcontent Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina), who rebelled against the republic in 63 BCE out of disgruntlement that his second attempt at being elected consul had been frustrated. His conspiracy and uprising were thwarted by the actions and public rhetoric of the actual consul for that year, Marcus Tullius Cicero, with the support of the incorruptible conservative senator Marcus Porcius Cato. We’re in that kind of territory right now — except that Trump is the incumbent occupant of the White House.

If, however, the immediate crisis might be compared with the conspiracy of Catiline, it is the deeper challenges facing the American republic that should be our more fundamental focus. Catiline came and went, but behind him in the shadows had been Caesar and Crassus, who, over the following 20 years, would bring down the republic, exploiting popular discontents against the old order and using armed force against it.

Trump did not arise out of a blue sky and the discontents and malign forces that helped him take the White House must be tackled head-on, if future and even more dangerous threats to the republic are to be headed off. Trump, however, must first be removed from the White House, before the republic itself can be reformed and revitalised.

Paul Monk is the author of The West in a Nutshell: Foundations, Fragilities, Futures (2009) and Dictators and Dangerous Ideas (2018), among other books.