James Madison, who was both a political activist and theorist (as well as the fourth US President), studied the rise and fall of republics throughout history. He concluded that republics only worked when they were small and homogeneous. Emerging from the American Revolution, Madison was focused on the question of how a democratic republic could be constructed from 13 quite different former colonies.
Madison uses ambition to counteract ambition
In a series of articles that Madison wrote with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, which have become known as the Federalist Papers, he argued for the ratification of the US Constitution. For the Constitution to go into effect, it had to be ratified by at least nine out of the 13 colonies. This was far from an easy task, as Americans were very sceptical of centralised power – especially any kind of executive power that came even close to resembling a king.
Madison developed a fascinating way of looking at the structure of the new US Government. Instead of being a danger to republics, Madison contended that the various factions would be used to counteract each other. As he put it: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Thus, ambition would fuel the three distinct parts of the US Government: legislative, executive and judiciary.
The US system is different from a parliamentary democracy
Unlike a parliamentary system where power is vested in a single entity, in the new US federal system, the power is divided in three different institutions. In a parliamentary system, a leader with a majority can enact their agenda on their own. Under the US system, designed in large part by Madison, the legislature is checked by the president, and both branches are checked by the judicial branch.
The US system was designed to make it difficult to accomplish things. Madison, like the other authors of the US Constitution, was preoccupied about the growth of central power. For almost 250 years, the system worked much as Madison had intended. Certainly, there were times when the presidency wielded far more power than Madison envisioned. The best example of this growth of executive power is the president’s ability to wage war. However, stretched though the system was, overall, it held.
Madison’s system breaks down under Trump
In Trump’s second term, the system designed by Madison has broken down. Over the last year at least, and perhaps longer, the US system of checks and balances has come apart. The mechanics of the US system are still sound; it is the individuals operating them who are not viable.
Madison constructed the US system of government on a cynical assessment of human nature: that self-serving politicians would cancel each other out. So, what happened? Why have so many Republican members of Congress subjugated themselves to Trump?
Lincoln explained why Madison’s system is broken
To answer this question, which may be the most important question in US history, we need to turn to Abraham Lincoln. In one of this most important, but less noticed, speeches, Abraham Lincoln addressed a civic group in Springfield, Illinois in 1838.
Lincoln was at this time an unknown member of the state legislature. The spectre of civil war and mob violence was looming over the horizon. Looking towards the possibility of civic unrest, Lincoln was worried about a demagogue amassing power in the U.S.:
Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.
The point that Lincoln was making, was that it was adherence to the rule of law that would preserve the US political system. Respect for the rule of law is the glue that holds the US system together.
The war on terror eroded respect for the rule of law
In the months after 9/11, the United States moved aggressively to protect itself from future attacks, creating an infrastructure that weakened the rule of law. The best account of this period is Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side/The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
In energetic prose, Mayer chronicles how the Bush administration weakened the US’s traditional commitment to the rule of law as part of the war on terror. Most Americans accepted this move as part of the price that needed to be paid to win the war on terror. The New York Times summed up its review of The Dark Side:
What does that mean? ‘Outrages upon human dignity’? President Bush said at a press conference in 2006, after the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions applied even to ‘enemy combatants.’ In The Dark Side Ms. Mayer provides a chilling answer, along with the most vivid and comprehensive account we have had so far of how a government founded on checks and balances and respect for individual rights could have been turned against those ideals.
Setting the stage for Trump
Almost a quarter century after 9/11, the time was ripe for a demagogue like Trump to assume power. Trump is more a symptom than a cause of the situation in the US. Trump has only seized the movement and bureaucracy of the war on terror and used it for his own purposes. The New York Times reported on 18 January:
In November 2002, President George W. Bush signed a bill creating a federal agency devoted to protecting the United States. The country was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the threat of international terrorism permeated public life. Among the agencies that would be included in the Department of Homeland Security, as it would be called, would be Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the parts of the government most responsible for enforcing federal immigration laws… But more than two decades later, as thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers flood Minneapolis, some Democratic leaders say the department’s role appears to have strayed far from its original purpose, turning its tools of enforcement away from external threats and toward President Trump’s domestic critics.
The question for the US is: can it build back respect for the rule of law, which is the glue that holds our system of government together?
Right now, it is too soon to say. Recognising how we got to the age of Trump is the first step in repairing the damage that has taken place over the last 25 years.
More on world:
