At Penpoint
- Democracy may be under threat in its oldest bastions
It is perhaps a coincidence that US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who both have the most egregious hairstyles in their country’s politics, are both facing crises which might throw into doubt the safeguards of the democratic process. However, both are proponents of an ultra-nationalist, virtually fascist, ideology that is suspected of undermining the democratic process, and establishing a tyranny. It is perhaps no coincidence that the crises they are facing reflect methods by which democracy might be overthrown. However, both beg questions.
Donald Trump is accused by a whistleblower of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in exchange for the release of military aid. As Biden is currently the Democratic frontrunner, and predicted by all polls of beating Trump handily if he contests against him as the Democratic nominee, that request was both political and involved using the taxpayers’ money improperly. The question that arises is what happens if the public elects an amoral person President, and that person sees no harm in using the public office for private ends.
Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is faced with a less personal, more institutional problem. His freedom of action has been circumscribed. It was established that he could not dissolve when his motion to do so failed to get the approval of two-thirds of the Commons. After appeals to the UK Supreme Court, his prorogation of Parliament was not allowed to stand, leaving him in a rather ridiculous position, as a Prime Minister who can neither dissolve nor prorogue. He is thus stuck with a House that has so far failed to take any action on Brexit. Except of course to pass a law ordering the Prime Minister to write a letter to the European Union asking for an extension of the withdrawal date, if it and the UK have failed to agree on a deal that would allow the British departure to be peaceful and create the circumstances for a smooth future relationship.
In Trump’s case, the system is coming up against the US Constitution, which has made the removal of the President a political process rather than a judicial. The House of Representatives is supposed to frame the Articles of Impeachment, and the Senate to vote on them after a trial, in which a two-thirds majority is needed to remove. Three Presidents have had Articles of Impeachment voted against them by the House, President Andrew Jonson in 1868, President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1999. Johnson and Clinton faced an impeachment trial in the Senate, where they were not convicted (Johnson only surviving by one vote) while Nixon chose to resign.
In each case, Presidents have seen the votes go on party lines. At present, while the Democrats are in a majority in the House, the Republicans are in the Senate. So while articles of impeachment may well be voted upon, conviction is virtually impossible.
Fascist parties seize power through elections, but never before have the homelands of democracy been thus ideologically threatened. Both Trump and Johnson may be outsiders, but they have both seized control of an existing party. The parties need to think about how this happened. But it might already be too late
However, it should be noted that one result of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment was that he was not re-nominated for the Presidency. That could conceivably happen to Trump. Nixon resigned, but not because he couldn’t bear the ignominy of the process, but because he did the math, and realised that he would be convicted. That meant losing his pension. He also received a pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford, for all the crimes he may have committed. Impeachment would have laid him open to criminal prosecution, which he wanted to avoid. The only situation in which this could happen to Trump would be if the American public grew so disgusted with him that Republican Senators felt that not voting against him would cost them re-election. That is what happened to Nixon. Whether Trump might resign in such a situation is unknown, but so far the poll numbers do not bring him to this situation.
If US democracy handles the situation properly, it will indicate that presidents cannot misuse their office. However, if trump has done wrong, and not only gets away with it, but is re-elected, a door is opened to the conversion of democracy into authoritarian tyranny. This has happened in history, with one example being the conversion of Roman democracy into an empire. One of the bulwarks against tyranny, and the one through which the suborners worked, was the Senate. And an important tool was populism. It should perhaps not be forgotten that suborners also used religion, and Julius Caesar was elected Pontifex Maximus. Trump is not head of a church, but he enjoys the support of the Religious Right. Like Caesar, Trump too is accompanied by a miasma of scandal.
One of the factors Trump should remember is that the apparent nonchalance with which he gets away with his sexual misbehaviour was helped by Clinton’s impeachment, which was about his suspicious relations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton not only got away with having an extramarital relationship, but having Ms Lewinsky placed in the Defence Department.
One failed impeachment proved that the sexual had passed into the private. Gone were the days when Nelson Rockefeller was greeted by cries of “You dirty lover” at the 1964 Republican Convention, when he appeared with his second wife, whom he had married after divorcing his first. If this impeachment fails, the principle established by the Watergate scandal, that the president cannot use his office for private means, will be jettisoned.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson seems to have been exploring another way into dictatorship, by his failed prorogation. Because there is no written Constitution, the British Supreme Court, itself a new-fangled kind of thing, has relied on a kind of ‘basic structure’ doctrine, to assert that Parliament cannot be interrupted in its right of oversight. Parliament will not accept the ‘no-deal’ Brexit that Johnson seems to want. He is being brought to the point where he may disobey the law, by not writing the EU for an extension. Even if Johnson does not disobey the law, there is a chance that he has opened the way for a successor.
Even in World War II, there was not a similar crisis of democracy. Though there were Nazi sympathisers aplenty in both the UK and the USA, the question of overthrowing the norms by which the two countries were governed did not arise. It should not be forgotten that Fascist parties seize power through elections, but never before have the homelands of democracy been thus ideologically threatened. Both Trump and Johnson may be outsiders, but they have both seized control of an existing party. The parties need to think about how this happened. But it might already be too late.