SELF-REFLECTION
The presidency of Donald Trump presents a daunting challenge to anyone who cares about the future of the rule of law. Never has a president so debased his position.
Take your pick: pardons for war criminals and venal cronies, using public office for private gain, tax fraud, lying and manufacturing a steady stream of misinformation, putting children in cages and trying to overturn a democratic election to install yourself as dictator. And that barely scratches the surface. The crimes run deep. The abuse of power has been relentless.
The question emerges: How can the Biden administration check and constrain this overwhelming pattern of wrongdoing? So many are saying that addressing the Trump administration’s misconduct would be too divisive and time-consuming. They counsel that the government should look forward rather than back.
I am struck by the long-term pattern of failure of accountability in American life. Over the last 50 years, the examples are numerous. President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, President George H.W. Bush’s pardons of Reagan officials for the Iran-Contra scandal, and President Obama’s failure to prosecute torturers who defiled the George W. Bush presidency all come to mind.
The thinking has been that accountability was too divisive. The problem is that the absence of accountability is a license for repetition of the abuse of power. For example, Obama’s unwillingness to pursue those who committed torture greatly increases the likelihood that behavior will recur.
Stepping back to look at the broader sweep of American history, the failure of accountability goes back to our country’s origins. The narrative we have told about Native American history is an early example. The savage war fought against Native Americans pushed them back farther and farther west across the continent. Law had nothing to do with this process, although dishonored treaties by the U.S. government happened along the way. It was a “might makes right” history.
How has that been officially acknowledged, and where is the accountability?
Where is the United States Native American Genocide Memorial Museum? It hasn’t happened. Denial rules.
Similarly with slavery, where is the ac countability on a national level? Americans have grown up with a rationalized view of that history, and there has been an unwillingness to reconsider how the past events of slavery affect us still. Conventional thinking remains that these events happened long ago and have little bearing on now.
It is telling that the only memorial for lynching in the United States was created by a private Alabama nonprofit law firm, the Equal Justice Initiative. We bury that history and as a result do not take the needed steps required to begin rectification.
The same pattern is true with the Vietnam War. Although many know it was a horrible mistake, there has been a collective refusal to admit that war was wrong and criminal. Instead of a self-critical look at our empire and our militarism, we blundered into Iraq, where we repeated Vietnam-like mistakes, costing untold lives, American and Iraqi. The empire, recognized around the world, is not recognized by Americans who have been taught a sanitized history.
We are overdue in the United States for taking a hard look at ourselves. While elections may have changed those in power, which is some kind of check, they have not promoted self-critical examination. When Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, one reason he provided for the veto was the provision that would require the military to rename bases that were named after figures from the Confederacy.
What better example of the failure of critical thinking than that? Are we still compelled to defend traitors committed to white supremacy who took up arms against the United States? To say that view is backwards does not express how odious it is.
It would be a huge mistake if no efforts are made to acknowledge and reckon with Trump crimes. Not to do so would make it much more likely that, at a later date, we could further devolve into some type of authoritarian state. The damage done by the last four years should not be understated. If Trump had won the election, we would be looking at a fascist consolidation of power. We barely escaped.
Ignoring presidential crimes is the same as saying the president is above the law, a position essentially argued by Nixon and Trump. That position must be repudiated. Presidents are not kings, and it is not a viable option for a Biden administration determined to reassert the rule of law.
Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot and blogs at jonathanpbaird.com.
