Rule of Law
If you live in a country robbed blind by crooked rulers, it is hard not to resent the country that helped them get away with it.
Years ago, Daniel Webster described the work of our Founders as having “set the world an example.” From Jonathan Winthrop to Ronald Reagan, we have called ourselves “a city on a hill,” set high for the world to witness. President Clinton argued that “[p]eople the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.”
America has long stood before the world as an exceptional country. And America’s exceptional nature confers upon us responsibilities. That is not a burden we bear, that is an asset we command.
As the son, grandson, nephew and cousin of Foreign Service officers, I learned that when the chips are down, there is no competition to the United States of America, in the hopes and dreams and aspirations of people around the world.
The power of our example draws people to our country, our ideals, and our mode of government. These tidal forces have flooded in our favor for generations, and helped make America “the essential nation.”
But if you want to be the example, you have to live the example. Back to Daniel Webster: “The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.”
There are two areas where we are dangerously failing to live our example.
First, climate change, or more exactly America’s failure to lead on climate change. We have clear scientific understanding of what carbon pollution means for our climate and oceans, yet we fail to act. Fossil fuel producers knowingly cause this harm, and aggressively fight political solutions to the problem using an arsenal of political money, much of it run through dark-money channels to hide their hand. Congress has shown itself unable to resist this industry, despite its obvious and enormous conflicts of interest.
The poorest people of the world, those who live closest to the land, will suffer the brunt of the coming change. That suffering will raise resentments about a democratic system that succumbed to dark money influence, and about a brand of capitalism that allowed industry to perpetuate the problem in the pursuit of profit, and other business interests to simply turn away, refusing to engage. This failure both of popular democracy and market capitalism will be a lasting blot on our American example.
Our other failure is our aiding and abetting of kleptocracy and corruption. There is a real clash of civilizations, to borrow a phrase from Samuel Huntington, between societies that reflect the rule of law and regimes of kleptocracy, criminality, and authoritarian abuse.
Ironically, the looters of the corrupt, unstable countries in the world seek the shelter of rule of law for their stolen pelf.
Rather than demand transparency and push them back to their dark corners, we have a whole industry to cater to them. As the infamous “Panama Papers” revealed, we are now a facilitator in this racket. American law firms, realtors, shell corporations, and financial services enable international crooks and thugs. This is another blot on the reputation of American capitalism and the democratic system that facilitates it.
If you live in a country robbed blind by crooked rulers, it is hard not to resent the country that helped them get away with it. If America’s role is the enabler of the crooked and corrupt, the resentment of those populations for what has been done to them by the crooked and corrupt will deservedly fall onto us.
Just discredit will fall on the institutions — capitalism and democracy — who failed so visibly in face of these well-known evils.
Presidents are not supposed to supervise, initiate or interfere with law enforcement investigations or prosecutions. Not of political opponents. Not of anyone. That’s the way banana republics behave; not the government of the United States of America. To prevent even the appearance of undue political influence, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have for decades separated White House politics from law enforcement. Today, we are seeing troubling signs that this separation is being circumvented by tweet and other forms of pressure. The Department of Justice is ordinarily protected from this kind of pressure by long-held standards designed to ensure its independence and integrity, but the president is a human firehose of political controversy, lashing about and smashing into the rules and norms of the presidency. Congress has the tools to investigate political interference with our nation’s law enforcement, and protect the department from abuse. I believe it’s long past time to use them.
If you believe that the world needs America, if you believe that America is the world’s essential and exceptional nation, then getting these questions right matters. Failing in moments of necessity will soon, and long, darken the lamp America holds up to the world.
We depend for the quality of life we enjoy on market capitalism and democratic governance. Those institutions in turn depend on popular approval and confidence. In the international contest of ideologies, it is not assured that ours will win; we have to earn the winner’s laurel, generation by generation. And we have to win it by example.
America is an exemplary nation. We have a role to play in this world, we Americans, and it is time we got about it.
