• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Balance of Power>
  3. autocracy>

Now there's an urgent opening to really make America great again

James McHugh
Stanley J. Marcuss
November 13, 2020
Donald Trump

President Trump behaved like an autocrat, participating in the election as a fig leaf and discrediting it after losing, write the. authors.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty Images

McHugh retired in 2012 after 11 years as a justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Marcuss is a retired partner at the law firm Bryan Cave and a former senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School. They are on the steering committee of Lawyers Defending American Democracy.


Mitch McConnell refuses to accept the verdict of the American people. The Senate majority leader is willing to indulge President Trump's attempt to destroy American democracy, by supporting his fight to stay in office despite his repudiation by nearly 78 million Americans and a margin of at least 5.3 million votes. Other Republicans give Trump and McConnell comfort by standing on the sidelines in silence.

This must end if American democracy is to survive. The norms of democratic behavior must be restored. The divisions that have poisoned this country must be bridged. This calls for enlightened behavior.

President-elect Joe Biden has started the healing process by assuring Americans that he will be the president of all the people once he takes office. His history of reaching across the aisle in search of compromise gives hope. He is in a better position than most to appeal to those who care for the future of the country, to persuade them of the importance of ensuring that the mechanisms of democratic government survive. If he is successful, we may see the beginning of the end of the nightmare to which we have been subjected by an incompetent and corrupt president.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

It will be just a beginning, however, unless the abuses of power that have crept into our system of government are recognized and reversed.

One week before the election, a compendium of abuses of power and needed reforms was released by our organization. More than 2,000 attorneys — including former judges and prosecutors, law school deans and managing partners of large law firms — formed two years ago to enlist our colleagues in the legal community to speak out against the threats to our democracy and to demand that Trump and Congress honor the fundamental principles, norms and values of our democracy.

Among the reforms we proposed are:

  • Compelling presidential compliance with congressional subpoenas and requests for government testimony.
  • Punishing government officials who lie and deceive the American public.
  • Prohibiting permanent "acting" government officials from exercising any power.
  • Prohibiting the Justice Department from being the president's personal law firm
  • Prohibiting use of the pardon power to protect presidential wrongdoing.
  • Punishing civil servants who work on the president's political objectives.
  • Outlawing nepotism, especially in the White House.
  • Prohibiting use of the White House for self-enrichment.
  • Requiring disclosure of the president's and vice president's business interests and tax returns.
  • Prohibiting revenge against whistleblowers and others who tell the truth.
  • Prohibiting voter suppression.

Many of these proposals will require legislation. For most of our history, legislation was not thought necessary. Most Americans understood implicitly that abuses of power would undermine the delicate checks and balances that make our Constitution work. The experience of the last four years has taught us otherwise.

Without legislation, the risk of repeated abuses is real. In an age increasingly vulnerable to autocracy and the preservation of power for its own sake, we cannot count on what was implicit in the past being what governs the future.

Legislation alone, however, is not enough. Compassion and empathy cannot be compelled. Respect for truth, diversity, political compromise, unbiased law enforcement and an independent judiciary comes from within. It requires a willingness to reach out to opponents in order to understand their concerns and grievances, and a desire to find common ground that satisfies competing interests. And it requires repudiation of the instinct for a "they did it, now it's our turn" approach to governance.

The winner-take-all approach to governance makes losers of us all.

Presidential elections are often bitter contests. Candidates frequently claim that an election is the most important in American history and that the future of our republic depends on the outcome. This time the future of the republic really is at stake.

Trump long ago refused to say he would leave office peacefully if the election went against him. He said that an election he did not win had to be fraudulent. He did what autocrats do: Participate in the election as a fig leaf and discredit it if they lose.

In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," Mark Antony observes: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." The evil the defeated president has done will persist long after he is gone — unless it is eradicated.

We have the means to do it. If we fail, the good that is in America is destined for interment with her bones.

From Your Site Articles
  • Street protests are not the best way to protect the election - The ... ›
  • Total bipartisan rejection of Trump's idea the election be postponed ... ›
  • How Trump is turning the presidency into a dictatorship - The Fulcrum ›
  • McConnell finally accepts Biden's victory - The Fulcrum ›
  • What will the world look like after the war in Ukraine? - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Since day one, Donald Trump has been an autocrat in the making ... ›
  • How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic ›
  • By Declaring Victory, Donald Trump Is Attempting an Autocratic ... ›
  • The United States is backsliding into autocracy under Trump ... ›
autocracy

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
2h

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
2h

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
2h

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
2h

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture