Lessons from the January 6th hearings

NBC

Watching the January 6th congressional hearings has brought back a rather vivid memory from my youth. I was in my last weeks of high school when the Senate Watergate hearings began and a first-year undergraduate student when they ended. I had declared a major in music at Bethel College (now University), but I was glued to the television throughout the successive months as Senator Sam Ervin presided over the hearings. I was angry at the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in which an embattled president fired the special prosecutor responsible for investigating the misdeeds of his own administration. Along with many other Americans, I was incensed at the spectacle of Richard Nixon abusing his constitutional authority in the interest of staying in power amidst credible charges of wrongdoing. Indeed, the Watergate scandal was one of the precipitating events that moved me to change my major field of studies from music to political science.

Political leaders abusing their offices are not as uncommon as we might like to think. Undoubtedly many American presidents would tacitly concur with Nixon's self-incriminating statement that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," by which he retrospectively put himself above the law during a famous interview with David Frost in 1977. Yet despite Nixon's dubious actions to secure his re-election in 1972 and his cynical appeals to a supportive "silent majority," he never attempted to launch a violent insurrection, choosing instead to subvert his country's constitution through more subtle and underhand means.

Fast forward nearly half a century. Americans are no less divided than they were during the 1960s and 70s, but the lines of cleavage have shifted dramatically. The two major political parties, each of which once boasted considerable diversity within its ranks, have become diseased parodies of their former selves. The reforms to the internal candidate selection process undertaken fifty years ago have brought the more extreme elements into leadership positions, thereby increasing the temperature of political rhetoric, both during and between elections. 

Moreover, they eliminated a crucial stage in the vetting process for such candidates as embodied in what were once negatively characterized as "smoke-filled rooms." These were where local officials within the parties would screen candidates before they were allowed to represent the party at the polls. Prior to the reforms, party primary elections were few and strictly limited in their decision-making power. After the reforms, primaries multiplied and their results became binding on delegates to the party's quadrennial national convention, thereby turning the process into something of a beauty contest.

This represents a dangerous over-extension of democracy. Democracy is satisfied when voters are presented with a choice amongst candidates who have been thoroughly examined and approved by their respective parties to stand in an election. But efforts to democratize more thoroughly the selection process risk damaging the larger political system. Now candidates with little or no political experience but with an ability to mobilize the masses can attain public office, despite the presence of better qualified candidates. The result is that a political party is forced to put forward the candidate who has won the primary elections and state caucuses but whom its currently serving officials recognize to be a liability. This was certainly the case when Donald Trump came onto the scene prior to the 2016 election.

Trump is a flashy New York businessman who, among other things, managed to file for bankruptcy six times and acquired a reputation for corrupt business practices. He had become a household name through his appearances on The Apprentice between 2004 and 2017. On the strength of his public persona, Trump decided to make a run for the presidency, which he won in 2016, against the expectations of many educated observers and perhaps even to his own surprise. He did so by courting a certain conservative demographic whose members had come to feel themselves excluded from their political leaders' concerns. These leaders included Democrats and "establishment" Republicans such as Ohio Governor John Kasich and Florida Governor John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, scion of the politically prominent Bush family which had already given the country two presidents.

A substantial part of this demographic consisted of conservative religious communities such as Roman Catholics and evangelical protestants. Their support for Trump was surprising given that he was scarcely a paragon of godliness and was notorious for his crude references to women and racial minorities. Yet he succeeded in appealing to their concerns over a variety of issues, including religious liberty, abortion, and illegal immigration. These are issues which Democrats and establishment Republicans had never sufficiently taken seriously, while the Democrats had become increasingly hardline in their defence of the abortion licence.

Now it was possible, of course, for a candidate who had won the presidency on the strength of this demographic to be conciliatory towards his opponents after he had won the White House. Past presidents had made a point of emphasizing that they intended to serve all Americans and not just those who had voted for them. Trump chose not to take this route. Instead he employed divisive rhetoric seemingly calculated to widen the gulf between the so-called red and blue states, harping continually on his status as winner in 2016 and belittling his opponent Hillary Clinton. Clearly, winning was a big deal for Trump, who never wasted an opportunity to claim the title of winner.

Thus it was not surprising that, in the run up to the 2020 election, Trump, sensing that his popularity was ebbing, began to warn darkly of vote fraud that could prevent him winning a second term to which he was convinced he was entitled. Many of Trump's supporters found this warning credible and, even after he had clearly lost the election, accepted his account that it had been stolen, against all credible evidence to the contrary. Sad to say, some conservative intellectuals were willing to lend credence to Trump's claims, sometimes simply by casting doubt on the motives of his opponents in the press and the courts. These doubts culminated in the attempted insurrection at Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021, the day when a joint session of Congress was due to count the electoral votes and confirm Joe Biden's accession to the presidency. The vote count did take place, after a delay of several hours, and Biden was certified to have won the election, amidst the mob violence which led to at least three deaths and fifteen hospitalizations.

Last year Congress set up a Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol after considerable controversy and lack of co-operation from the majority of Republicans. The committee is chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) and vice-chaired by Representative Liz Cheney (R- Wyoming), the latter of whom, along with Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), was censured by the Republican National Committee for their participation. The Congressional Select Committee met between 9 June and 21 July and heard testimony from a variety of insiders in the Trump White House. 

The portrait they have painted of President Trump is of an unhinged man bent on clinging to power at all costs, even as his closest staffers and family were telling him that he had lost the election and needed to concede to his opponent. Far from calling on the rioters to desist from their attack, Trump had to be restrained by his staffers from joining them at the Capitol. Even as he prepared to speak to the nation the following day, he could not bring himself to admit that he had lost the election, as seen in this video:

We can expect more revelations when the hearings resume in September. In the meantime, we do well to reflect on some basic preconditions for holding public office in a democracy.

A would-be office-holder 

1. must respect the rule of law above his or her own ambitions;
2. must be loyal to the country's constitution and abide by its provisions, even to his or her own disadvantage;
3. must not abuse the office to advance personal financial or other interests;
4. must honourably concede to his or her successor when defeated in an election;
5. must refrain from divisive rhetoric and undertake, where possible, to unite the nation around a common task of doing public justice;
6. must unwaveringly adhere to the truth and refrain from self-justification to cover missteps;
7. must be generous and charitable to opponents and supporters alike.

Sad to say, Donald Trump falls egregiously short on all of these qualifications, even as no leader has achieved perfection in any of them.

Watching the Senate Watergate hearings in my youth angered me and persuaded me that Nixon should not be allowed to remain in office. Half a century later, viewing the January 6th hearings has elicited a different response: sadness. Sadness for the country of my birth and grief that its political culture has become so divided. Institutional reforms, such as tougher anti-corruption laws for elected officials and changes to the parties' internal candidate selection process, could serve to rectify some of the dysfunction. But above all what is needed is a willingness on the part of Americans to listen to each other across the increasingly wide chasms that divide them and to recover those traditions of civility which Walter Lippmann so eloquently extolled nearly seven decades ago. Along with this must come a willingness to support candidates who are serious about building bridges and refrain from needlessly widening existing cleavages.