WHAT DO YOU THINK MUST BE DONE ON JANUARY 20TH, 2021?
Let us start with a big assumption; that a Democratic president will be inaugurated on January 20th, 2021.
Every president begins as a neophyte, but this president will face problems presenting few precedents: there are really no experts here. The next president will require immense physical, mental and moral energy to return America domestically and especially internationally to a standing only somewhat less than before the inauguration of Trump, and it cannot be done alone. Forums such as this can produce reasonable responses to the unique challenges of 2021 that can and should find their ways into policy. What follows are less suggestions than they are points to engage in a conversation among fellow readers.
In the first episode of the last season of The West Wing, vice presidential candidate Leo McGarry, played by the late John Spenser, schools presidential candidate Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, on time available for a new administration.
Santos: I don’t want to wait transition; I want a plan in place. I want to spend transition hiring a staff that can execute it and on day one I want to get to work, not dickering around for three months. You want something to worry about, worry about that.
McGarry: OK. Well, let’s start by reframing the question. Forget about a four-year term. The presidency’s eighteen months. That’s your window. After that there’s midterms: no one on the Hill’s got time to do business with you, they’re too busy getting reelected. Then suddenly, you’re running again.
Santos: So, I’m basically throwing out everything but my first five pages.
McGarry: In the garbage. Realistically, one page.
A Democratic president in 2021 will not have that much time. Why the special urgency?
It is a tradition that outgoing presidents leave a letter of encouragement to their successors. Likewise, many presidential appointees have shown themselves eager to give practical advice to their successors, regardless of policy or ideology. Not this time.
Any Democratic administration will succeed a hostile group with an open contempt for its new successors and a proven record of criminality. Abroad there will be crises unseen in this generation demanding immediate attention.
Undoubtedly, between a failed attempt at a Trump reelection and the inauguration of his successor, there will be a massive criminal attempt to destroy and even alter vital government records in order to conceal illegal activity and, perhaps more sinister, in order to perpetuate the influence of foreign entitles within, perhaps buried deeply within, the government of the republic.
In short, the first eighteen months are secondary; the first days will determine the fate of the republic.
This is the job. This is now.
The first task: securing the executive department.
What then, are the immediate challenges?
The first is to regain control of the Department of Justice and restore it to its constitutional function; with this all other efforts will come to naught. We really have no idea how much damage has been done; the first task is to discover where to begin.
On inauguration day teams of justice department investigators must physically enter all government offices and ensure that pertinent records, hard and soft copies, have not been altered, stolen or destroyed. The problem is, how is this to be accomplished? Can a new president, legally and practically, immediately appoint officials with right of entry and powers of arrest?
The second task: cleaning up after Trump.
All security clearances will have to be reexamined very quickly. It is clear that Trump allowed foreign agents unparalleled access to his government. Examinations must be made to ascertain the loyalty to the United States of those appointed by Trump. Yes, this is almost a sick joke considering the fact that Republicans some generations ago questioned without proof the loyalty of Democrats and it is even more ironic to consider that the chief counsel for McCarthy was Roy Cohn, mentor to Donald J. Trump.
Probably during the entire administration and perhaps into the next, investigation, indictment and prosecutions for crimes committed by the Trump ring will be a major task of government. For the future of honest governance, this cannot be delayed or avoided.
On February 28th, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported that there have been at last three thousand conflict of interest between Trump as president and Trump as businessman: about two per day since he entered the White House. Since many of these conflicts involve members of his family and his lackeys, it is certain that criminal cases will continue long after his death. Civil and criminal prosecutions of the Trump gang at all levels, federal, state and local, are perhaps the next great growth industry.
What needs to be discussed is not the choice to investigate and prosecute, but the means by which such actions might take place; these should be debated in forums such as these and decided upon before inauguration day. Do we need new congressional committees? Would special prosecutors be more suitable?
What crimes have been committed and under which authority? What are the parameters of emoluments? Does accepting foreign interference in an election constitute treason?
The constitution gives broad powers of pardons to the president. These powers are limited to federal offenses and do not wipe out the existence of the offenses themselves. Undoubtedly, Trump will shower pardons on all his accomplices and perhaps even upon himself. Pre-emptive pardons always seem shaky in that they appear to violate the first amendment. A person is innocent until proven guilty, therefore a pardon should have no effect until the pardoned is pronounced guilty by a jury of peers. It would seem that the duty of the justice department would therefore be to investigate and prosecute all criminals. Upholding the rule of law is not a mere additional detail; it is, in fact, far more important than the guilt or innocence of any single person. An interesting point of such trials would be that the beneficiaries of the kind of sweeping pardon that Gerald Ford, to his shame, gave Richard Nixon could not in the trials of their accomplices, plead the fifth, since they are pardoned.
The recent spate of strange sentence commutations shows that Congress must eventually precisely define the parameters of presidential pardons and how they may be administered.
There is a danger that the precedent began by the Republicans of using the impeachment of President Clinton as petty revenge for the process under which Richard Nixon was forced to resign could be extended in vengeance for the prosecution of the Trump ring to regular criminal investigations of future Democratic administrations every time the Republicans gain a majority in either or both houses of congress.
Obviously, an answer to this is to make sure that Republicans do not gain control again. More realistically, an effort must be to very specifically and narrowly define the interpretations of the offenses for which the Trump cabal are to be charged, and have these written into law and confirmed by the courts.
The third task: redressing wrongs and reestablishing faith in government.
This is the first administration in which reappointments will be quite as important as appointments. Many officials have resigned or been forced out by Trump or have felt obligated resign due to his interference with their legally mandated functions and his corruption of the purposes of their agencies. Those who have been unfairly dismissed or who have felt it necessary to resign should be offered equivalent or superior positions. This would do a lot for lagging morale in civilian and military agencies. A ready list of potential US Supreme Court nominees should be in existence on inauguration day. The national honor certainly requires that Merrick Garland be first of that list.
The attempts of the current group in the White House to transmogrify every function of government into pleasing Trump’s ego have resulted in attacks on members of military for doing their duty, endangering the ability of the military to accomplish its missions.
This would be an excellent time to demolish the myth of pro-military Republicans while at the same time improving both morale and efficiency. Republicans have beat their dead cat long enough: Republican support of the military meant throwing billions at civilian defense contractors and staging occasional publicity stunts while rebranding soldiers as “warriors,” imagining and wishing American youth to be a horde of Huns raping, raping, killing and looting instead of trained, educated and motivated soldiers engaging in war for their nation. Soldiers have honorable and honored lives; warriors have Edward Gallagher.
Logical first steps would be expressions of confidence and promotion for both those persons unfairly denigrated by the administration and also expressions confidence in the ability of the military to police its own.
Of course, the ludicrous space force must be disbanded. Likewise, the diversion of funds from the military for the Trump vanity wall must cease and any future diversions for purposes extraneous to military missions must be made illegal. The military is not a means of domestic politics nor are its resources intended for domestic politics. The military is, and must remain, as in all democracies, a tool exclusively utilized in foreign policy.
The ultimate task: rethinking governance.
Without a strong majority in both houses any attempt to right the wrongs of the last four years will be futile. We have all allowed our attention to linger too long on Trump, (this is one of his malevolent effects) when the congressional races might determine the fate of the republic.
The possibility exists of another Democratic administration with a Republican congress which, if one is to take previous Republican congresses as a standard, would result in a McConnell style holding of the American people hostage until they have the good sense to elect an administration more amenable to corruption.
It is significant that the news cycle and almost all of the discussion even here at the Daily Kos, has centered on the executive. Indeed, much of the conversation seems to consist of preaching to the choir: Democrats announcing to Democrats that they don’t like Trump. This is followed, quite naturally, with opinion and stories about the primary race but here much is on process and less is on policy.
The current descent into personality rule rather than public policy has only become dramatic in the past few years, yet it has been occurring for a long and will continue to do so without particularly ruffling the lives of most citizens. Consider the Roman Republic and Empire: here is how one visitor found Rome, the Eternal City:
…her official acts were dated as they had been since the expulsion of the kings, by the years of her consuls; her senate still met as it had met to direct the war against Hannibal, as it had assembled when the Gauls broke into the city. The crowd, the great idle, roaring Roman crowd, demanding distraction and entertainment, was still there to riot or cheer, as in the times of the Gracchi. The palaces of the Caesars sprawled on the Palatine, carrying proof in brick and mortar and marble of the succession of emperors. …the senate and the magistrates were there, with speeches whose periods rolled back to Cicero … above all, the Roman people were there for the traditional distribution of rations and for the circus games that were an immemorial and essential feature of any Roman occasion.
All seemed as it was and always would be. Yet this was not the age of the Gracchi nor that of the Caesars; it was 500 AD and the Praetorian Prefect whom the city was greeting was Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The office of state, the shells of Rome’s once hallowed institutions, remained unchanged yet had descended long before into irreversible impuissance.
What then, ultimately, is required is a great national discussion centering not only on the reform and salvation of the current government but on the very nature of governance itself. It must occur now; it can occur here.
References:
Cahn, D. (Writer) & Misiano, C. (Director). (2005, September 25). The Ticket (Season 7, episode1) [TV series episode] In A. Graves, C. Misiano & J. Wells (Executive Producers), The West Wing. John Wells Productions.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. (2020, February 28). New Report: Trump Has Accumulated 3,000 Conflicts of Interest. .https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/trump-accumulated-3000-conflicts-of-interest/
Llewellyn, P. 1993, Rome in the dark ages. Barnes & Noble, pp.22-23.