Trump Isn’t Here to Serve the People
He has
shown that we need new laws to constrain an executive who seeks unchecked
power.
Ms.
Rice is a former national security adviser.
·
Sept. 1, 2020, 7:36 p.m. ET
Desperate to salvage his presidency,
Donald Trump is inciting racial violence by
encouraging armed vigilantes to confront protesters angry over the killing and
maiming of unarmed Black people by the police. The president is stoking civil
conflict to distract voters from his failed leadership and strengthen
his electoral prospects.
Deadly as it is, Mr. Trump’s latest
tactic reflects his view of the presidency as the tool of one man. Rather than
serve the people, Mr. Trump is trying to extend his time in office while
undermining any constraints on his power.
Across the executive branch, Mr. Trump
and his appointees have flouted long-honored norms and violated laws with
relative impunity. They have succeeded largely because Senate Republicans have
sacrificed oversight and accountability on the altar of subservience to this
president so long as it preserves their majority control.
Under Donald Trump,
the abuses have touched almost every corner of government, suggesting the
president views democracy itself as his opponent.
Throughout the Republican National
Convention, the president and senior officials blatantly violated the Hatch
Act,
which prohibits government officials from engaging in political activities on
the job. From holding the event on White House grounds with cheering uniformed federal law enforcement officers in attendance, and staging a
naturalization ceremony as a campaign event with participants used as unwitting political props, to his secretary of state violating departmental rules by delivering a campaign speech
from Jerusalem, Mr. Trump has defiled the presidency for political gain.
Disdainful of the human consequences of
the pandemic, Mr. Trump has demanded less testing, while the White House
coronavirus task force recently pressured the
C.D.C. to discourage testing asymptomatic persons exposed to the
virus and to stop
directly gathering critical data on Covid-related hospitalizations. Mr. Trump
similarly bullied the F.D.A. administrator into hyping the benefits of
convalescent plasma treatment and, potentially, rushing a European vaccine into use before completing
standard Phase 3 trials in the United States.
Meanwhile, the State Department and
numerous federal agencies routinely defy congressional subpoenas. Five departmental watchdogs have been fired for investigating
accusations of administration malfeasance, while whistle-blowers like the
Purple Heart recipient Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother have been
harassed and denied promotions.
The commander in chief intervenes improperly in military justice, redeeming war
criminals at the expense of discipline and unit cohesion. Mr. Trump’s Commerce
Department has curtailed the census amid a pandemic in an apparent attempt to
undercount poor and minority communities. His crony managers have kneecapped
the Post Office to undermine
mail-in voting.
The president has
also corrupted the sacred powers designed to protect the American people and
our national security.
Attorney General William Barr
coordinated the deployment of federal forces to violently disperse peaceful protesters in Washington. The Department
of Homeland Security sent armed forces to Portland, Ore., and other cities over
the objections of local officials under the guise of maintaining law and order.
Their actions predictably provoked heightened violence.
These abuses of federal authority are
so extreme that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
rightly felt compelled to pledge that the military will play no role in the
election or
its aftermath.
To bolster Mr. Trump’s false narrative
that Russia did not interfere on his behalf in the 2016 election and is not
doing so now, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
misleadingly conflated the role of Russia with that of China and Iran and has refused
to provide further oral briefings on election issues to congressional
intelligence committees.
In the same vein, the intelligence
community has been prevented from providing to Congress the
annual worldwide threats briefing after Mr. Trump objected to some of its
elements in prior years.
Mr. Trump has used the Justice Department
to spare convicted associates like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and to concoct
a labyrinth of lies accusing the Obama administration of committing “treason”
by “spying” on the Trump
campaign.
From 2016 to the present, he has
repeatedly solicited
foreign electoral interference
from Russia, Ukraine and China to harm his opponents, and sought
to conceal his actions.
Mr. Trump’s pervasive
efforts to turn the state into his personal protectorate not only reek of
autocracy, they are also deeply corrosive to America’s democracy and national
unity.
The last time America had a president
who grossly abused his office, Richard Nixon, the people responded by electing
overwhelming majorities of the opposing party to both the House and Senate, in
1974. That Congress enacted sweeping reforms to curtail executive power,
mandate transparency and constrain potential corruption of the presidency.
Many of the norms and laws that Mr.
Trump has shown contempt for were born of that era. His fresh abuses underscore
both the insufficiency of existing law and the failure to enforce adequately
those rules that remain on the books.
The country needs a president and a
Congress committed to enacting far-reaching reforms to plug the gaps in
Watergate-era legislation. New laws must ensure that the coequal branches of
government effectively constrain a president who seeks unchecked power.
Enforcement cannot remain dependent on the executive branch policing itself or
vulnerable to the complicity of the president’s party in Congress.
As a lifelong Democrat and a senior
official in the Obama administration, naturally I’d like to see a Democrat in
the White House. But far more is at stake in this election than political
party.
The last four years have revealed the
fragility of our democratic institutions and our overreliance on norms rather
than enforceable law. If American democracy is to endure, we need to strip a future
demagogue of the power to abuse the presidency.
