The Power We Don't Use

I have just finished an unfortunately relevant book, How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Their in-depth analysis of the road to authoritarianism directly references the norm breaking actions of the Trump administration and how it has harmed our institutions. While neither party is innocent, their work shows the republican party taking large steps to undermine democracy and secure their power over the will of the people. In functioning democracies, the actions of those in power to ensure the survival of the institutions are marked by two general practices: mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. The first is more self-explanatory. A democracy is a political system based on compromise and cooperation; all parties will need to work together at some point. Institutional forbearance is more complicated and the subject of this piece.

There are many weapons in the arsenal of elected officials, great and small, that can be used against their political rivals. Lawmakers can obstruct, vilify, impeach, and investigate others as ways to fight against them. However, for the majority of our history, our politicians have done a good job with choosing to not use their powers for political attacks. This institutional forbearance was a building block of confidence required for the system of democracy to work. It gave politicians an unwritten rule of cooperation while also allowing for a confidence in the system to be created. This choice to not use the power you have is often what makes a party powerful.  That we can do so much destruction as a country, and choose not to, is what made us strong. 

We are a nation of many different powers. The obvious ones come to mind: militarily and economically strong and globally influential. However, there are also softer powers that we have more closely tied to our inaction that makes our country strong. Warfare tactics, political subversion, human right guarantees, torture, UN participation, all of these are influential in shaping how the world at large think about the US. Our worth as a nation, as with any social concept, is tied to how those who can act think about it. It is worthwhile that the world had a special place in their hearts for the myth surrounding the United States of America. A diverse melting pot where all were free and any could “make it” if you worked hard enough. Those beliefs, coupled with the impactful times in history, the aftermath of WWII, the civil rights movement, moral leadership, allowed those within and without to believe in something greater than themselves. This now seems to be a reality that is slowly being whittled away.

President Trump and his subservient party has adopted an attitude towards the power that they have as a way to win by any means necessary. Something that would not have been supported had these myths surrounding the US still been true. Racist remarks, insulting citizens, lying to the public, dismissing the intelligence community, and calling journalists the “enemy of the people” would have drawn widespread criticism from any other party. The US did not do this because we did not feel the need to. Take, for example, the military demonstration on the fourth of July. President Trump had an idea of tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Ave with soldiers marching in unison while he presided over the ceremony as “grand marshal”. If that seems unusual, that is because it is. When a French person thinks of military parades, they think of their own Bastille day, apparently where the President got the idea. If a Russian, Chinese, or North Korean person thinks of these parades, they only need to think less than a year past when their own country participated in the show of force. Any American does not think of their country when they think of a military parade.

There are some things that countries do for a very specific purpose. Whether it is to show off their might, frighten their citizens, gain power, or show off for other nations, there is always a larger message for every action. The US never had to do these things because we had a collective self-confidence that did not require any outside show of force. We understood we were the most powerful nation on the planet, we didn’t need to prove it. Donald Trump does need to prove it. It is quite the dichotomy that the most secure nation on the face of the earth is led by the most thin-skinned man on earth. We want to be the shining city on a hill, the moral high ground. The exact opposite of Donald Trump, who cannot take a single, small slight to his ego.

The point of power is to lead. The point of power is to charge into the future and lift those up to come with you. What Donald Trump, and those of his party who have completely abdicated their responsibilities to him, know understand power to be is a means to win over their rivals. This is not what the US has ever stood for, nor what the world thinks about us. We should all try to keep this in mind as we head into the 2020 election.