HEADING DOWNHILL WITH DONNY
Vandalizing Our Democracy
Donald
Trump cares about nothing else except undermining our country’s election
results.
Opinion
Columnist
- Nov. 22, 2020
On Bill Clinton’s Inauguration Day,
Jan. 20, 1993, he found on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway desk in the Oval
Office a gracious, handwritten letter left for him by the Republican president
whom he had defeated.
In it, the departing president reminded
the arriving one:
“You will be our President when you
read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is
our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you. Good Luck — George.”
In reflecting on how meaningful that
letter had been to him, Clinton wrote of George H.W. Bush that “though he could
be tough in a political fight, he was in it for the right reasons: People
always came before politics, patriotism before partisanship.”
That is why it was
somewhat embarrassing that some members of the Clinton administration committed
silly, immature acts of vandalism when handing the reins of power over to
Bush’s son, George W. Bush, in 2001.
The General Accounting Office
investigated the vandalism for a year and concluded that “damage, theft,
vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex” during the
transition, and as The
New York Times reported: “The agency put the cost at $13,000 to $14,000, including
$4,850 to replace computer keyboards, many with damaged or missing W keys.”
It was embarrassing, but not truly
disruptive to the transfer of power. Still, Republicans pointed to it as an
extreme breach of protocol. Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, who had asked
the G.A.O. to look into the allegations of vandalism, said of the findings:
“The Clinton administration treated the White House worse than college freshmen
checking out of their dorm rooms.” He continued, “They disgraced not just
themselves but the institution and the office of the presidency as well.”
I have thought about the grace of the
elder Bush’s transition letter and the smallness of the Clinton White House’s
shenanigans often in recent weeks as we have watched Donald Trump stubbornly
refuse to concede, brazenly try to disenfranchise millions of voters and
recklessly sow distrust in our electoral system, and by extension our
democracy. Everything that happened before has been rendered quaint.
The way Trump has absolutely trashed
our democratic norms has made a mockery of things that used to raise our, or at
least Republicans’, hackles about decorum and propriety — like Obama not
wearing a flag pin, putting his feet on a desk, or wearing a tan suit.
Republicans have either cheered or shrunk in silence as Trump has set his
blazes and fanned the flames.
The damage Trump is
now doing trying to claw back an election that he has lost is almost
incalculable in its scope and yet-to-unfold possibilities. There is no
guarantee that Trump will ever concede, and there is every suggestion that he
won’t. There is no way to know what a Biden Inauguration Day would look like.
Would Trump attend? Would he gracefully exit the White House premises?
Furthermore, the damage Trump has
attempted to do to faith in the American election system has been wildly,
depressingly, successful. A Politico/Morning Consult poll earlier this month found that “70
percent of Republicans now say they don’t believe the 2020 election was free
and fair, a stark rise from the 35 percent of G.O.P. voters who held similar
beliefs before the election.”
That would represent tens of millions
of Americans who, largely because of Trump and the far-right press that abets
him, will see a duly elected Joe Biden presidency as illegitimate, and the
election system as flawed.
Furthermore, we have a president who
appears to care about nothing else but turning his loss into a win, and, if he
fails, handicapping the Biden administration.
He has essentially given up fighting
the Covid crisis — other than touting vaccines — even though the virus is
raging in this country and around the world. On Saturday, Trump skipped the
“Pandemic Preparedness” meeting of G-20 leaders to play golf. As The Times
reported, “at least 1,428 new coronavirus deaths and 171,980 new cases were
reported in the United States” on Saturday.
Not only that, but as food
insecurity triples for
families with children during the Covid-19 pandemic, food bank lines stretch
ahead of the holiday, and with 12 million Americans scheduled to lose
unemployment benefits the day after Christmas, Trump is not pressuring
congressional leaders to pass another aid package.
Remember that it was Trump who used a tweet to halt stimulus talks in early October, writing: “I
have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election
when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses
on hardworking Americans and Small Business.”
He didn’t win, and now he could care
less. There is golf to be played. Trump is hurt but not humble. He is angry and
lashing out.
I wish that all he and his team were
doing was removing some B’s and H’s from some keyboards. Instead, they’re
taking a sledgehammer to a young and fragile democratic experiment and allowing
Americans to suffer and die as they do it.
Charles Blow joined The Times in 1994 and
became an Opinion columnist in 2008. He is also a television commentator and
writes often about politics, social justice and vulnerable communities. @CharlesMBlow • Facebook
