Breaking Norms

[This post was written in the weeks before the insurrection at the Capitol.  That event, the President’s role in it, and its impact on our democracy deserve a separate post.  I hope the following will serve as an introduction to those dramatic escalations.]

In assessing the damage that Donald Trump and his presidency have done, perhaps the most important thing to remember is that government, like most institutions, operates on the basis of unwritten norms that constrain behavior.  The Constitution actually says very little about what the president can and cannot do.  Those unwritten traditions and expectations are, in one sense, then, soft guardrails that may occasionally be violated without harm to the democracy, for instance, when President Carter stepped out of his limo and walked much of the inauguration route or when news media stopped self-censoring stories of politicians’ private lives.  But when those norms are shattered willy-nilly, injury to the democracy can be irreversible.  I have written previously about the destruction of some of its these norms, eg here, here and here.

Trump has revealed that the presidency was built on a basic assumption about a range of reasonableness among presidents, a range of willingness to play within the system, a range of at least a modicum of understanding of political and normative constraints.

Trump has delighted in stepping outside the range of reasonableness, refused to play within the system, and ignored the usual normative constraints of office.

Washington Post writer David Montgomery’s recent column “The Abnormal Presidency” examines twenty of the most important norms the President has broken during his presidency.  It’s worth reading in its entirety.

Here’s just a selection of shattered norms.  I’ve ordered them by category.  I would invite you to consider each of them individually, for in any normal time — when Congress took its responsibilities seriously — any one of these norm violations would have risked impeachment.  But, of course, this is not a normal time.

1.    Dividing the nation in times of crisis.

A.  Perhaps most important of all, Trump has repeatedly challenged US elections as “rigged.”  Even after he won the electoral vote in 2016, he still called the election rigged … because the results showed he lost the popular vote.  Despite the clear loss this past November and the unmitigated failure of his many legal challenges, Trump still claims that he won the election.  It’s become obvious that he will continue to make this claim long after he leaves office.  That it will be a significant danger to our democracy that cannot be overemphasized. 

B.  General and former Chief of Staff James Mattis wrote: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.”

2.    The President lies over and over again.  The media have documented tens of thousands of these lies, yet the President repeats them over and over.

3.    Trump denigrates truth and objective fact, refusing to acknowledge unassailable truth:

A.  He denies uncomfortable reality, both minor (eg, claims that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama’s) and major (rigged elections).

B.  Truth becomes one among many “alternative facts,” from which to select the most advantageous. 

C.  The President has verbally assaulted bedrock institutions

1)   The President personally attacks the Supreme Court and other federal court decisions, or even the judges themselves.  He reduces the judiciary to one more partisan body whose judgments are considered by Trump mere opinions.

2)   He delegitimizes intelligence and law enforcement agencies, whose best judgments he feels free to ignore or deny.

3)   Trump also feels free to contradict scientific conclusions, saying, for example, that the coronavirus is going away and will just magically disappear.

4)   He brands the press as “the enemy of the people.” 

4.    The Executive Branch has gradually become a personal tool for the president.  He has fired officials who are not devoted enough to him, for instance, Jeff Sessions, and replaced them with the loyalists who will not question his judgments.  Those who do disagree, for instance, General James Mattis, are fired. 

5.    The President abused his power to appoint “acting” Cabinet Secretaries, who, because of their temporary status, do not need to be confirmed by the Senate.  But Trump has allowed many of them to remain “acting” so as to avoid confirmation hearings.  These temporary officials have little political power and are even more subject to Trump’s whims since they can be fired so easily.  In has first 2½ years in office, Trump appointed more acting Secretaries than any other president did in their full 4-or 8-year terms.

6.    The President uses government power for partisan ends.  All presidents do this to some extent but Trump’s use has been especially egregious.

A. He has used the military for political goals, eg threats to use military against demonstrators.

B.  He has politicized foreign policy and diplomacy, eg Ukraine.

C.  He has politicized court appointment, for instance, the ten judges determined by the American Bar Association as unqualified.  Most were confirmed by the Republicans in the Senate, anyway

D.  He has corrupted the use of the pardon.

E.   The President has used the White House as a political stage, quite literally when he accepted the Republican nomination at the White House.

7.    Trump has refused to accept oversight

A.  The President has blocked administration officials from testifying in legitimate congressional investigations.  He has refused to open his tax returns to the public as has been the norm for over half a century.  Tax returns would be especially important for revealing possible foreign involvement in his business affairs.

B.  Trump has fired five Inspectors General, at least in part because of their critical reports of his administration’s policies and actions

C.  He has challenged, often successfully, the independence of the Justice Department — including the FBI, intelligence services, inspectors general, CIA and many other agencies — by personally intervening, eg pushing Attorney General William Barr to investigate rigged elections without evidence that they exist.

8.    The President has used the power of his office to enrich himself personally.  All presidents since Richard Nixon have voluntarily placed their investments in blind trusts so that they cannot because be accused of using their power to increase their wealth.  This President not only gave to his sons control of his business empire but he also remains active in managing it.

9.    The president encourages violence among his supporters:

A.  told an audience at a campaign rally that he would pay their legal fees if they engaged in violence against protesters. 

B.  By demonizing immigrants, Trump has encouraged violence against them, for example, During his campaign, the President characterized Mexican immigrants as “Drug dealers, criminals, rapists.”

C.  The President has also attacked Congresswoman Alexandria Octavio-Cortez and others in “the Squad,” Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), saying they should “go back to where they came from.”  (Three of the four were born in this country.)

10.     From the very beginning of his campaign Trump has embraced authoritarians around the world, e.g., Russia’s Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, the Philippines Duterte and others.

11.     Recently, the President has almost certainly broken the law by pushing (even indirectly threatening) the Georgia Secretary to “find” 11,800 votes, which would have given Trump the victory in that state.

The list could go on.  The point is that, in themselves, none of these (except the last) is illegal.  These unspoken rules are not written down anywhere.  So, when they’re violated, there is no concrete basis on which to object.  But each violation weakens the democracy by decreasing the respect for and the confidence in the government and in democracy itself. 

The frequency and brazenness of Trump’s attacks can make our eyes glaze over. “We know all that!” we say.  Indeed, part of Donald Trump’s power is the normalizing of anti-democratic values.  But it’s important we keep our vision clear.  Spending some time with this list or, perhaps, with David Montgomery’s (above) can help us remember as many examples as we can, perhaps even to begin to immunize our democracy from the likes of Donald Trump.

For our future, the President’s behavior leaves a trail of tattered norms that could serve as an established path for the next demagogue who comes along who is more competent than Trump at subverting democracy.  The last four years have taught us that our Constitution is no match for a corrupt president, venal political party that is willing to sell its soul for power or for individual politicians who forego their sworn responsibilities and their deeper principles for fear of political consequences.  Our country, long the beacon of freedom across the world, has darkened its light.

The President has revealed to us the deadly decay of partisan politics.  (We should remind ourselves that a switch of 43,000 votes over three states would have thrown the election to Trump.)

The future of our national politics is, at this point, very uncertain.  We are more politically polarized than at any time since the Civil War.  In a future post I’ll look at what we might do about it after he leaves the presidency.