EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about this topic on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and available with video on YouTube and Lessenberryink.com.
**
Is Our Democracy In Real Danger?
***
More than forty-five years ago, when I was still a college student, our country was gripped by a crisis unlike any other in our history.
We had a President of the United States who, it turned out, had lied to the people, and obstructed justice. After months and months of national stress, indisputable proof that he had done those things came to light.
The nation held its collective breath. Then, congressmen from that president’s own party went to see him and said, in so many words, that he had to resign or that they would impeach and remove him from office.
He did indeed resign. Gerald Ford, our new President, told us, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”
We believed him. What had happened gave me new faith that the system did work. But that was a lifetime ago.
The “bad president,” who was of course Richard Nixon, didn’t really challenge the system; he just lied about what he had done, and when the smoking gun was produced, virtually everyone, including Nixon himself, realized he had to go. We live in a different world today.
Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton was impeached in a partisan, opera-bouffe maneuver in which everyone knew he wouldn’t be convicted. No matter what the official grounds, everyone suspected he was really being impeached for lying about extramarital sex.
But at least he was deeply embarrassed, and his fellow Democrats were angry. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Donald Trump, or the Republicans.
Nobody, by the way, had to be am investigative whiz to find the smoking gun in the Donald Trump impeachment saga.
He voluntarily provided it himself, in the form of the transcript of the “quid pro quo” phone call, among other things, and said, in essence, “so what?” Nor is the attitude of Congress the same as during the Nixon impeachment hearing.
Back then while there was a partisan aspect to it, once the White House tapes provided clear proof that the President had obstructed justice, virtually the entire Republican delegation demanded Nixon leave.
It’s also worth noting that less than two years before that, Nixon had scored one of history’s biggest landslides, winning more than 60 percent of the popular vote and becoming the first President ever to win 49 states.
Donald Trump, of course, decisively lost the popular vote. Yet the Republicans in Congress have marched in virtual lockstep with him, in a way that reminds me of the way Soviet officials slavishly followed Joseph Stalin’s decrees.
I find this especially frightening. I have enormous intellectual as well as personal and professional respect for Professor Bob Sedler.
He believes our democracy isn’t in serious peril, because, as he put it, “Presidents come, presidents go, but the Constitution endures.”
I hope he is right. But the Constitution only matters as long as those in power as well as the people respect and revere it.
