MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: Travel Journal No. 5 – What Comes After the Election? Be Prepared …

“The human mind can only stand so much … You can’t win with a losing hand.” – Bob Dylan

 

 

By Marc C. Johnson

A (rather) strange, very short play opened in London recently. It’s called “Triumph,” a satire on Donald Trump’s presidency.

Considering the Trump presidency, the strange is certainly appropriate. But the short is not nearly short enough.

The central figure in the new play, as the London Times theater critic Clive Davis, noted “is a White House press secretary, and we all know what has just happened to the latest real life occupant of that job.”

Davis didn’t much like the production, but that’s what critics are for, right?

I mention this not because I saw the play – I didn’t, but did very much enjoy the London production of Witness for the Prosecution, the Agatha Christie who-done-it first produced in 1953 – but rather because a 20 minute play about the White House press secretary helps me make the point that American politics and our very own Orange Mussolini are never, even for a moment, out of sight or mind, even in Europe. ¹

For example, a column in the Financial Times focused on the late, unlamented Katie Zacharia, the world’s shortest serving political mouthpiece, was headlined: “The U.S. Administration enters utter shambles era.”

British understatement: We been in the utter shambles era for a while now, thank you very much.

 

The press secretary fiasco was played as metaphor for two more years of Trump chaos, corruption and utter incompetence. And the Brits know their chaos – what with seven prime ministers in 10 years – even if their chaos seems decidedly more civil than ours. And being a crook in high public office still (most of the time) has consequences.

One gets the sense that with all the turmoil in France, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere at the moment, the widespread dismay about the American misadventure in the Middle East, the Trump abandonment of Ukraine (and NATO, and soaring prices of gas, food and housing, Europe at large is bracing – ducking and covering – for the outcome of the American midterms just like the rest of us.

Permit me to suggest, given a few weeks of relative detachment while traveling in Europe, that neither Americans or Europeans are prepared for what is likely to come from our looming elections.

A failure to imagine

I’ve always believed that the study of history is a powerful influence on one’s imagination. It is pretty difficult to consider the lessons of the past and not engage in some wonder about what those lessons tell us about our times and our lives.

A failure of imagination, I fear, is one of the central features of the incredible descent of American democracy down its rotten rabbit hole of lies, misinformation, wholly partisan BS, white nationalism and all the rest.

We – or at least most of us – initially couldn’t imagine that a profoundly unwell, narcissistic, authoritarian, con man could so easily rip up the country’s decades-long political playbook … and largely get away with it. But he has.

It’s his cult of a political party that stands to take a beating in two weeks, but if the beating is a serious one the Misleader in Chief can’t possibly be to blame. Someone else – or many someones – need to take the fall and there must be consequences that only a demented mind could manufacture.

Are we ready for what very well could happen when Dementia Man strikes before or immediately after the election?

For the most part we haven’t processed or responded effectively to what he has already done.

Let’s briefly review while we check our seat belts.

The orange man’s record

Widespread corruption? An American president (and his family) making billions off positions of “public trust.” Check.

Assaults on political opponents, minorities and marginalized people? Check. Check. Check. (Note: they are not eating the dogs and cats.)

Destroy the post-war global system that underpins American and European security? Check.

Fire senior military officers? Totally politicize the Justice Department? Ignore laws and requirements approved by Congress? Triple check.

Empower a thuggish national police force that roams American cities and small towns without warrants or any real oversight in order to intimidate people of color and kill protesters. Yes, indeed.

Pile on this arsenal of outrage by having this national police force raid the home of a naturalized member of Congress who had been a regular target of presidential venom? Check the fascism box right there.

Create a Supreme Court, packed with ultra right wing zealots, to grant near total immunity for all of this and more and more? Check mate.

We can barely keep track of the daily outrages let alone respond effectively to them.

And we can’t – at least most of us – imagine what awaits a mere two weeks around the political corner.

Be afraid and be ready

I made the mistake the other evening of reading a piece by Will Bunch, the estimable columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Bunch gets Trump and Trumpism as well as anyone writing today and his column was for me a cold shower at bedtime.

The headline was enough to curdle your morning yogurt: “Are the secrets to a Trump postelection coup locked in a White House safe?”

Bunch went on to discuss the work of two former high level White House officials – Joel McCleary and Mark Medish – who worked for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. McCleary and Medish have written a series of essays for The Washington Spectator about the enormous, mostly misunderstood, and little known “emergency” powers presidents have accumulated in the post-World War II era. ²

Trump has greatly expanded on these “powers” under the legal cover of a blizzard of executive orders that could become, as Trump whisper Steve Bannon has happily suggested, the “predicate” for Trump’s post-election emergency actions.

“The president will do it” – meaning invoke his extraordinary emergency powers – Bannon said a while back. “The predicate is being laid perfectly.”

Here’s Will Bunch:

If anything, the Trump regime’s efforts to establish a predicate for election interference have dramatically accelerated in recent days, from official efforts to make the demonstrably false case that states such as California have noncitizens on their voting rolls, to stationing National Guard troops at ballot drop-off locations in Washington, D.C., to get voters used to the idea. And why the purge of so many free-thinking generals and admirals, replaced with Trump loyalists?

The shocking raid against Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and reported probe into her citizenship status certainly looks like an effort to establish a predicate for challenging the election of certain Democrats. Likewise, the White House’s dramatic tilt toward Moscow and against Kyiv in the ongoing Ukraine war — defying the will of Congress and U.S. public opinion — makes more sense when you remember that Russia has also repeatedly sought to interfere in our elections on Trump’s side.

McCleary and Medish argue that mainstream journalists make a big mistake when they try to judge Trump’s moves on matters from Ukraine policy to tariffs as anything other than tactics that serve the only thing that matters to him: amassing, and holding onto, power.

“For the first time,” they write, “we are governed by a President who cannot afford to become a private citizen again — and who has, in the [Supreme Court’s presidential] immunity ruling, the pardon power, and the machinery … the means to ensure he never has to again” risk the consequences of leaving office.”

I recommend taking a deep breath and maybe have a glass of something handy when you read the entire McCleary/Medish piece.

Here’s a bit of it:

Political scientists have a plain word for government operated as a private revenue stream: kleptocracy. And kleptocracy obeys an iron law—the wealth is safe only while the power lasts. Exit means exposure; exposure means claw-back, prosecution, ruin.

Money and Power. Put the two together and you have the equation that governs everything in this essay. A president for whom the loss of power means personal, legal and financial catastrophe will rationally spend whatever it costs to retain power. He may not succeed, but he could bring us all down failing.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon not from appetite alone, but because laying down his command meant standing trial. The Founders tried to design a presidency that a man could safely leave. This critical design assumption has failed. For the first time, we are governed by a president who cannot afford to become a private citizen again—and who has, in the immunity ruling, the pardon power, and the machinery described below, the means to ensure he never has to.

It is impossible to adequately condense the vivid detail in the McCleary/Medish essays, so let me just poise a question or two.

• After his 2020 re-election loss who among us thought Donald Trump would actually summon a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capital to attempt to overturn an election he lost? Not many.
• Who among us believed he would blatantly use every available presidential avenue to vastly enrich himself and his family?
• Who thought he would actually launch a mindless, ill-conceived war in the Middle East, entirely bypassing the gutless in his own party, while violating the pledge he made over and over again to his supporters to avoid such misadventures?
• Who thought he would sign a piece of legislation providing powerful sanctions against Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine and then turn on a dime and abandon all the leverage sanctions provide while agreeing to buy Russian diesel fuel?
• Who thought, even when the Supreme Court (briefly) tried to shackle his tariff schemes, he would double down on stupid with our nearest neighbor?
• Who thought he would tear down the East Wing of the White House or shutter the Kennedy Center or destroy a much loved public golf course in Washington on a whim?

I could go on, but I dare say few – even in his own party – thought Donald Trump, mastermind of bankrupt casinos, impresario of a failed airline, pal of Putin, and all the rest would create so very much chaos and destruction.

We couldn’t imagine it. We need better imaginations.

There is no precedent for Trump and Trumpism in American history. He is a one off, so we must use the available lessons of history to more realistically assess what could come next.

First, remember everything Trump says is projection.

When he talks a “rigged” election it’s because he intends to rig an election.

When he talks about voting irregularities he’s offering the predicate to seize voting machines and discard votes that are not in keeping with his hold on power.

When he summoned the mob on January 6, 2021 he was betting on violence and chaos, intimidation and fear. He got all of that and because of fear and intimidation – see Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, etc. – Trump beat what most certainly was the clearest, most obvious case for impeachment in American history.

And you might think, given this history, that he couldn’t possible mess with the certification of congressional votes by declaring a national emergency, invoking the Insurrection Act or just issuing a decree like some guy once did in Germany in 1933.

Will Trump defy the courts? While he has lost on many occasions, he continues to slowly win. The courts by design move slowly and without any independent means to enforce a ruling. This is where a willingness to use power matters.

Again McCleary and Medish:

The courts are a wall, not a shield. Walls stop what is driven into them. They do not move to cover you.

Nor should the opposition console itself that winning the House restores the old equilibrium … this government does not legislate; it rules by executive order, emergency declaration, and impoundment. Divided government checks a legislating presidency. It checks one that rules by decree far less well.

We are not here forecasting whether Steve Bannon’s ominous prediction of an imminent declaration of national emergency by the president is correct, but we have concluded that the threat of executive actions along those lines is credible because the predicates are in place.

I pray that Americans have had enough of the chaos and corruption, the insults and idiocy and they will vote in massive numbers to halt the so far unconstrained assault on American democracy by a homegrown American dictator.

Maybe the ballot box will help end this. And then again perhaps we imagine something that cannot be.

A cornered Donald is a dangerous Donald

A president for whom the loss of power means personal, legal and financial catastrophe will rationally spend whatever it costs to retain power. He may not succeed, but he could bring us all down failing.

A cornered, damaged, defeated Trump is one dangerous man. Use your imagination.

The only force that has ever falsified that prophecy of the unchecked power grab is the deliberate, organized, unglamorous refusal of citizens to let it come true—in legislatures, in courtrooms, in county election offices, at kitchen tables, in board rooms and town meeting halls, the streets with discipline, and above all at the polls in numbers no manipulated assessment can launder away.

The loaded weapon is on the table. The claim of urgent need is being drafted. We can all see the drafting hand if we choose to pay attention.

The lights are on now. Nobody gets to say they were dancing in the dark.

Let’s hope in two weeks that the French aren’t talking about an America in chaos.