Autocracy is baked into American presidency
Trump isn’t the first autocratic president, and won’t be the last
Tuesday, September 6, 2022. By B. Kumaravadivelu
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
That was Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. He was the only President to ever resign the office after investigations proved that, during the 1972 presidential campaign, he authorized the illegal break-in into the Democratic National Committee housed in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C.
He uttered those infamous words when responding to a question from David Frost, a well-known British television host, who asked him why he had authorized the burglaries, wiretapping, and the most scandalous cover up in American history.
Yes, the U.S. Constitution does allow impeachment proceedings against presidents for their illegal activities while in office.
Since the republic came into being, only three presidents have been impeached, two of them in our lifetime.
With no consequence for them whatsoever.
In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
In 1998, Bill Clinton was impeached for “lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice.”
Donald Trump was the only president impeached twice. Once in 2019 for “abuse of power and obstruction of Congress,” and in 2021 for “the charge of incitement of insurrection,” in the wake of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
All the three presidents were impeached by the members of the House of Representatives, and all three were acquitted, rescued by Senators of their own political party.
Richard Nixon was facing impeachment but resigned before that happened.
He was never prosecuted even after leaving office because of a blanket presidential pardon granted by his vice president Gerald Ford who succeeded him.
Many presidents in American history have used and abused the power of presidential pardon vested in them. They have not only pardoned political leaders but also got several blue-collar as well as white-collar criminals out of jail even though they were all tried and sentenced in a court of law. Most often it’s done for political reasons.
Toothless impeachment proceedings against grievously erring presidents, and presidential pardons of convicted offenders make a mockery of the inscription on the main building of the U.S. Supreme Court: “Equal Justice under Law.”
Clearly, American presidency comes with enormous powers. No other elected Head of Government in a democratic society has as much powers as the American president.
In parliamentary democracies, a Prime Minister is considered only as a first among the equals since any member of Parliament can potentially be elected as Prime Minister by the parliamentary members of his/her party.
An erring Prime Minister can be removed from office relatively easily just as happened recently to Britain’s Boris Johnson.
It’s apparent that American presidency comes with a get out of jail card.
There are those American presidents who, motivated by public service, dutifully abide by Constitutional and judicial standards to lead the nation in the right path.
There are also those who, motivated by personal power, deceitfully exploit all the Constitutional and legal loopholes to incite their base in a destructive path.
With so much political power to exercise and so much legal latitude to exploit, American democracy makes the president inherently autocratic, if a domineering leader chooses to become one.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines autocracy “as a system of government in which one person possesses unlimited powers.”
True, a democratic system like ours has built-in checks and balances to reign in an elected leader. However, these checks and balances are useless if partisan legislators slavishly protect their autocratic leader from any Constitutional and legal consequences instead of protecting the nation from any assault on the institutions of democracy.
Recent political events have revealed alarming aspects of autocracy hidden behind a façade of American democracy. The denial of presidential election results, the storming of the U.S. Capitol, and the attempts to elect people who are election-deniers as officials to oversee upcoming elections have startled many right-thinking Americans.
We in America are very much used to hearing our politicians characterize leaders in some of the Asian, African, and South American countries as autocrats, totalitarians, or dictators. These leaders, we’re told, all have an unquenchable desire to preserve personal power by any means necessary.
Similar critical statements have started emanating from our land.
Commenting on the January 6th Congressional hearings which shed light on how former president Donald Trump incited the crowd to storm the Capitol, political scientist Steven Levitsky remarked: “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader. This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”
In a recent prime-time address to the nation, President Joe Biden called out some of the opposition leaders saying that they “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence.”
As the editor of New Yorker magazine David Remnick pointed out, “most Americans have readily accepted the commonplace that the United States is the world’s oldest continuous democracy. That serene assertion has now collapsed.”
While there’s some justification in such criticisms, I believe we as a nation may not be able to effectively address the problem if we focus only on individual leaders, however nefarious their activities are.
The problem is more fundamental; it’s systemic.
The autocratic tendencies harbored by some of our leaders are rooted in the powerful institution of American presidency itself. Their tendencies are encouraged and enhanced by a coterie of sycophantic legislators who are determined to preserve their own political power while failing their constitutional duties.
Despite presidential transgressions, we’re often told that nobody is above the law. That’s a nice sounding slogan but an empty one.
The sooner we the people recognize power-hungry politicians and the harm they do to the nation, and electorally act on that recognition, the better for the nation.
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