I used to revere the great experiment that is the United States. After Trump, I’m not so sure | Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian – US News
theguardian.com
Summary
On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weakness A merica’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House. Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start, confidence in a bright, exceptional US future was combined with foreboding and doubt. That yes, a crude, venal braggart is in the Oval Office – one who, we learned this week, personally pocketed $2.2bn in his first year back in office ; and yes, he launched a disastrous war that has made one of America’s sworn enemies, Iran, stronger and the US weaker; and yes, he has set about dismantling a post-1945 rules-based international order from which the US only ever benefited, growing stronger and richer; and yes, he and his vice-president seem determined to replace their country’s animating “creedal” conception of national identity, in which citizenship is open to whoever subscribes to America’s core ideals, with a definition that instead demands blood-and-soil ethnic heritage – but all of that will pass. The founders erected several barriers to such a person, whether emoluments clauses, to guard against the receipt of foreign gifts and the pursuit of earnings outside the job of serving the people as president, or an elaborate series of checks and balances to ensure powers were separated rather than concentrated in a single pair of hands. In this second term, Congress has watched as the president gathers more and more power to himself, stealing it from them, and they have not stirred. Meanwhile, the judges of the supreme court, whom the framers envisaged as the protectors of the constitution, have played their own part in enabling the Trump power grab.
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On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weakness America’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House. Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start, confidence in a bright, exceptional US future was combined with foreboding and doubt. At the close of the 1787 constitutional convention, a woman approached one of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, to ask if the delegates had established a monarchy or a republic. Franklin’s answer: “ A republic, if you can keep it. ” Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
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