When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, Republican leaders claimed that Trump, as president, would respect the rule of law. "I still believe we have government institutions that will curb anyone seeking to bypass their constitutional obligations. We have a Congress and we have the Supreme Court, we are not Romania," said Senator John McCain at the time.
Commenting on this, writer Erik Posner, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, says Romania looks better nowadays. Freedom House, an organization that monitors political freedoms in countries of the world, has lowered the US rating to 86 from 100, just three points higher than Romania and much less than America's peers in democracy like Britain and Germany.
But to give McCain his right - as the writer says in his New York Times article - the president has not yet clearly violated the country's laws or constitution and has vowed and threatened only to break the law, but he has always been retreating at the last moment on the most important issues.
According to the writer, President Trump's damage to the country in his poisoning of public rhetoric with lies and insults and his largely failed efforts to direct criminal investigations against his enemies and his manipulation of his position were politically motivated to enhance his standing at the expense of foreign policy and the broader public interest and his appointment to amateurs in high positions and his terrible policy choices, including his neglect Corona Virus Infection.
All of this - as the author says - was, regrettably, legal, yet all of these actions raise this question: What will happen if Trump is re-elected? Will the constitution’s borders be permanently destroyed in a second term, as many critics have expected since he took office in 2017? The answer is probably not, for two reasons:
What will happen if Trump is re-elected? Will the constitution’s borders be permanently destroyed in a second term, as many critics have expected since he took office in 2017?
First, American institutions, despite being damaged, remain strong because most of them resisted when Trump tried to set them aside. Courts often ruled against him, and even convicted him. The media did not care about harassing journalists, and the states ignored orders to end their closures due to Corona, or suppress protests against police brutality. The army suddenly stopped when Trump threatened to send soldiers against the demonstrators. Despite its volatility, the Justice Department pursued most investigations against the president's allies.
Second, and surprising to some, Trump has not tried to expand his powers, as has been the case in other countries throughout history when democratically elected leaders seize dictatorial powers in an emergency, and his critics have expected the same from him. But when a real crisis hit the country in the form of a pandemic, Trump was clearly not interested in taking power or even using powers already in his hands.
The writer added that all of the above does not mean complacency in the event of the re-election of the president, but to indicate that we focus on the harm Trump is likely to do instead of the worst scenarios that are unlikely to happen.
As long as Republicans remain in power in the Senate, Trump will still have the freedom to appoint his loyalists. If elected again, he is expected to continue to abuse the presidential powers in foreign affairs at the expense of foreign policy.
At the same time, if Trump remains hated even after winning his re-election, it is likely that Congress, the courts and agencies will continue to cordon him by preventing him from acting hard even when he must.
The article concluded that if Trump poses a threat to democracy, this is not because he will topple the constitution, but because his contempt for American values and institutions and his inefficiency as a leader may persuade the Americans, as a realistic example, that democracy simply does not work. And while we are still very far from that point, another four years of (judgment) Trump will bring us closer to this.