THE TABLET

THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY FOUNDED IN 1840

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

TRUMP VERSUS THE FOUNDING FATHERS

The world could be about to witness a gargantuan struggle to save American democracy, should Donald Trump win the US presidential election next week. It is clear that he will try to subvert the US Constitution and the system of democratic government it upholds if they stand in his way. He has little respect for truth or the law, and he is willing to whip up sectional antagonisms, white versus black or anti-migrants versus immigrants, Puerto Ricans versus white Americans, men against women, liberals against conservatives, if it suits him. Trump seems to be the antithesis of the United States’ motto, E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”).

understandable why many wish to. If he regains the presidency of the United States, the task of its friends and allies will be to adjust themselves to him, to find modes of cooperation and coexistence. He will have become again the choice of the American people as he was in 2016, and they have to be respected. The American cult of individualism still hinders the collectivism of Right or Left. An enduring totalitarian state would need firmer ground than a Trump-led administration, even one better prepared for office than in 2016, could offer. The question remains, however, as to how a man so ill-suited to high office can have persuaded such a

But Trump’s divide-and-rule approach has two enemies, each of which is capable of thwarting him.

The first is himself: his erratic and irrational temperament, his inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, his ailing mental capacity and inability to concentrate, and his habitual crossing of the bounds of decency. The charge of “fascist”, which has been made against him by former close colleagues, including senior military figures, and has been endorsed by his rival Kamala Harris, implies someone with a systematic and methodical intention to promote a totalitarian far-right ideology. Yet what Trump seeks to advance, almost exclusively, is himself, not a particular world view. He will use democracy and the rule of law when it suits him. His rallying cry, Make America Great Again, is almost devoid of meaningful content.

A totalitarian state would need firmer ground than any administration led by Trump would be able to offer large proportion of the population of the United States to want to trust him with power.

So America’s near future may still be a rough ride. If Kamala Harris wins, she can expect that substantial efforts will be made to undermine her legitimacy. She may not control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or indeed either of them, as the checks and balances of the American system do their work. She will have to govern a deeply divided and troubled nation. Her approach to abortion is troubling, and the repeal of Roe v. Wade has left an untidy mess. A typical European solution – giving women access to legal abortion up to the first 12 to 16 weeks of pregnancy – could be the least bad option. When Harris talks about abortion, she never seems to recognise that the interests of two human lives are involved, not just one.

His other enemy is the robustness of the American system, which was designed from the outset to hold tyranny at bay. The Founding Fathers knew what it had taken to throw off a tyrannical government – British tyranny, in their case – and drew up the principles and rules for a system that had as few as possible of the defects of the colonial administration under the reign of George III, as they had experienced it. In the foundation myth of the nation, he was the archetypal tyrant, the Pharaoh from whose grasp this portion of God’s Chosen People had escaped. They were not about to open the door to a Pharaoh of their own, yet they knew that some day someone might attempt it. Their solution was a “government of laws, not of men”, as John Adams put it, with its three elements, an executive, a legislature and a judiciary, held in tension – and watched by a free press – under the doctrine of the separation of powers. That, and the delegation to individual states of the union of various powers that a tyrant would need to control. States’ rights are jealously guarded.

There are numerous anti-tyranny tripwires all over the system – this is the origin of the notorious “right to bear arms” deemed by the Constitution “necessary to the security of a free State”. And it has withstood far greater internal and external threats to its stability than any that Trump might devise, including a civil war and two world wars, with destructive racial tensions always in the background. It is a civilisation whose roots still lie in the English common law, in Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the foundations on which its liberal democracy, human rights and the rule of law are built.

It is easy to demonise Donald Trump, and it is

The very colourfulness of Trump’s character exerts a popular appeal that is missing from the more lawyerly, less exciting personality of Harris. His style is extravagant hyperbole, hers is cliché and platitude: statements of the absurd on the one hand, of the banal on the other. Yet with some notable exceptions, many of their policies are remarkably similar. Under either presidency, guns will still exist in super-abundance and mass shooting will still occur with shocking regularity; US capitalism will plough on profitably and largely unchecked; universal free healthcare will still not be accepted as a basic human right; the poor will remain poor and the black population will still be disadvantaged. Infant mortality will still be high and rising, far exceeding the rates in similar high-income countries.

There seems to be more clear blue water between the candidates in foreign policy. Nevertheless, the United States will still be the principal guarantor of Israel’s existence, and China will still be America’s chief international rival while also one of its main business partners; Ukraine will continue to be threatened by Russia, though under Trump its outside support would look increasingly precarious.

Both Trump and Harris need to re-examine the distortions that flow from the globalisation of trade, which has, so to speak, exported the industrial proletariat to other countries where both life and labour are cheaper than in the West.

So come Trump or come Harris, the Earth will still turn on its axis. To defeat yet another threat of lawless tyranny, if that proves necessary, America only needs to be true to itself. The framers of the US Constitution, the famous Fathers of the Union after George III was pushed aside, saw Trump coming, long ago.

2 | THE TABLET | 2 NOVEMBER 2024

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