Hoping to continue the July 2022 discussion from the Message Forum...

Since Bill (to whom I owe a great trip to Vienna--thanks again!) has rasied this point, here's a quick response based on tonight's dramatic Jan. 6 committee hearing.

It pivots on the committee's repeated use of the word "responsibility," which is tied to the clause in Art. II of the Constitution requiring the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." As it happens I am writing an essay right now on "Impeachment, Responsibility, and Constitutional Failure: From Watergate to January 6," and the epigraph for the whole paper is a remark made by John Dickinson on June 6, 1787 at the Constitutional Convention:

"Secrecy, vigor & despatch are not the principal properties required in the Executive. Important as these are, that of responsibility is more so, which can only be preserved by leaving it singly to discharge its functions."

Other scholars have noted, following the Oxford English Dictionary, that the word responsibility was used in novel ways during the debates over the Constitution. It ties in with Bill's "a republic if you can keep it" phrase (which comes from Benjamin Franklin kleaving the Convention, with Madison overhearing it). The polint here is that the Constitution makes the president the sole holder of the executive power, and his defining or preeminent duty in a republic is to the take care. In other regimes, you can celebrate or elevate other characteristics. But not in a republic, where your first duty (as the Constitution itself prescribes) is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which by any measure is the direct opposite of what Trump was doing, and not only on January 6, though that was its dramatic climax.

Worth switching over to read!  In a Republic, the government - and its leaders - are supposed to work FOR THE PEOPLE, not to glorify or enrich themselves. 

But we as citizens and voters - as long as our votes aren't somehow suppressed - are responsible for putting in the effort to become informed enough to elect good leaders, according to our lights.

Suppressing - even subverting - our votes makes me VERY NERVOUS right now!

Thanks go to you, Jack-- we in Vienna were lucky to be able to take advantage of your European visit.   (To explain:  The US Embassy in Vienna had established a "Distinguished American Author" series of occasional public lectures by American intellectuals with the cosponsorship of the Austrian National Library.  Other speakers in the series besides Jack included Jared Diamond and David McCullough.)

I was wondering how this topic of the state of our democracy in the US would play out in this forum, and wanted to throw in another consideration: how American democracy is viewed from overseas (that used to be a professional concern; now that I’m retired from the State Dept. it’s mostly a personal interest).  When we were at ETHS it was pretty well accepted that the US was the go-to role model for global democracy – the standard by which other democracies were measured.  Then Vietnam happened, and the propping up of Latin American dictatorships, the invasion of Grenada (remember that?), waterboarding, revelations of secret CIA torture sites, to name a few —all that and more began to gnaw away at our reputation.  A Pew survey in industrialized countries last year found only 17 percent of those polled considered the US a good democratic model. The democracy monitor Freedom House, which is bankrolled largely by US Government funding, says American democracy is still “robust” but that partisan pressure on the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, harmful policies on immigration and asylum seekers, and growing gender and racial disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence have eroded our relative standing among the world’s democracies.   Now we can add book banning by some states and local school districts, and—as Susan mentioned --states’ blatant attacks on established voting procedures – this stuff is noticed overseas. I think more than a few of us are inclined to lay the blame on Trump for this state of affairs, but Freedom House says that this erosion of democracy in our country began years ago, predating Trump’s presidency.  The Economist magazine noted that noted that Trump didn’t cause the decline in American democracy; he was elected because Americans had grown mistrustful of their democratic institutions.

Bruce or Linc – one of you, I think (I forget who and now the posts have been taken down from the message forum) called for an overhaul in how our government is working.  You’re not alone:  Another 2021 Pew survey found that 85% of Americans see the need for “major changes” in our political system – and nearly half of those believe the system needs to be “completely reformed.” Pollster John Zogby found that 46 percent of us believe we might be headed for a civil war. 

So that, at greater length than it deserves, is why I’m interested in this topic, and why I’m interested in others’ views.  I hope we can keep the conversation alive.

I think there are several issues at play here. One could argue that over the long run admiration for Americcan democracy in general has not corresponded with how other liberal societies want to structure their institutions of government. They prefer a parliamentary system, where a majority party or a coaltion appoint the government, to our presidential model. If they have a bcameral legislature, their upper house is unlikely to have the same authority at our Senate, which has degenerated into a wretched institution. And where they have constitutional courts subjecting the acts of government tio constitutional scrutinry, they don't have a Supreme Court manufacturing zany interpretive theories to uindermine major policy decisions.

On the other hand, they have long admired the underlying political stability of the U.S. and the peaceful transfer of power, and is exactly what Jan. 6 called into question. If you were in a foreign ministry somewhere else, trying to assess the political stability of the U.S. in the years (let's say a decade) ahead, you would want to hedge your bets on how stable the US "political system" (to use a key Madison phrase) really is. What would your Plan B of foreign policy become, for example, if Trump escapes indictment and conviction and becomes president again. He said just tonight that he had tol NATO allies that he would come to their defense against Russia. The one reassurance we have here is that we now know that Russia, though armed with terrible weapons, is badly prepared to threaten other nations in conventional warfare.

Well stated, Jack, even though I'm only mildly reassured by your last sentence.  This is the same Trump who early in his presidency publicly questioned NATO's value to the US and threatened to pull out of the Alliance.  He also said that, if the were popular in Europe, he wouldn't be doing his job.  Your hypothetical foreign ministry would indeed be wise to hedge its bets.

 So Trump said that he told NATO allies he would support them against Russia. Really? Well if he said it, it must be true. Right.

Right.

Right.

I read where our own Jack Rakove, among other esteemed historians and lawyers, has weighed in with an amicus brief against the "Independent State Legislature Theory" currently being adjudicated by the Supreme Court. Let's hope that disinterested reason rules, and the justices strike down this strained interpretation of the Constitution.

Yes, I organized the brief and was its main author, but with significant contributions from several colleagues. If you're interested, here's the cite to read it:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1271/244058/20221026155401139_Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Founding%20Era%20Scholars%2021-1271.pdf

Here's a link to the Moore vs. Harper (Independent State Legislature Theory) opinion piece from the Brennan Center for Justice (BCJ) that mentions Jack :

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/moore-v-harper-high-court

If you're not familiar with it already, the BCJ is well worth following to stay abreast of justice- and democracy-related issues.