TRUMP’S DESPERATE GAMBIT AND THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY

[Ayo Olukotun]

TRUMP’S DESPERATE GAMBIT AND THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY 

By Ayo Olukotun

“What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States.”

Republican Senator, Mitt Romney condemning Wednesday’s organized storming of the House by Trump’s supporters.

New York Times, Thursday, January 7, 2021.

United in disbelief and outrage at Wednesday’s violent storming of Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters, the Congress rallied back on Thursday morning to certify Joseph R. Biden Jnr.’s election as President of the United States. In a riot described by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a failed coup and that occasioned the death of four citizens, Trump’s supporters broke through barricades in order to disrupt proceedings. 

Trump, even as he appealed to the rioters to go home, continued to insist that Biden’s election was stolen, a statement he had made countless times in the last couple of weeks. Even as the court dismantled the basis for Trump’s projected victory, the man continued to defy American institutions, the sanctity of elections including approaching the Samson option in which the house would come tumbling down on everyone. In this failed bid, reeking of power dementia, Trump got generous help from swathes of Republicans who either feared telling him the truth or stood to benefit one thing or the other from the disgraced leader. Taken along with extremely controversial presidential pardons described by the Guardian (London) as “sinking Trump further into swamp of his own shamelessness,” Trump has pretty much re-written the narrative of his presidency setting in the process a record of infamy by undertaking a battle he could not have won. Counterfactually, consider what a dignified exit he would have had if Trump in keeping with American and civilized tradition conceded defeat two months back and set in motion the process of a peaceful and orderly transition. That would have been more like August preparation for a possible comeback of Trump as President, a possibility he has now violently slammed the door against.

By showing a grievous disregard for the Constitution as well as the written and unwritten rules of democratic civility, Trump has ensured that anytime his name is mentioned, most regrettably, Americans and the world at large will recall not his finer moments and the qualified good that he did but the regressive and painful aspect of his presidency, a part of which is a confrontational and reluctant exit from office. Make no mistake about it, politicians the world over are creatures of power lust with scant regard for morality though they can opportunistically cite the Holy Books in order to rally supporters and gain respect. That notwithstanding, there are limits and constructive constraints to the manner in which power is sought or retained. Indeed, it is possibly the acclaimed civilized constraints that undergird developed democracies that distinguish them from immature, unstable democracies as well as banana republics.

By taking Americans on a senseless journey that borrowed lavishly from the playbook of unstable and underdeveloped democracies ruled by strong men, the man got Americans nervously worrying about sins of commission and omission that handed them the cup of suffering that narrowly passed over them. Legalists may controvert that Trump had not clearly broken any law but had merely stretched the right of recount which the constitution provides to its elastic limits. True, to a large extent but is there not something like the spirit and the letter of the constitution which implies that a constitution is important not just for what it specifies but what it does not specify which remains germane to democratic nurture and blossoming? As this columnist recounted in, “US Elections and Trump’s Sit-Tight Posture” (The Punch, Friday, November 13, 2020), this is the first time since the 1890s when a defeated Presidential Candidate will not only fail to congratulate his victorious opponent but will doggedly insist to the last ditch that the election was rigged against him. 

We cannot at this point compute the lasting damage that Trump’s frontal assault on the institution of American elections will do to the vitality and robustness of that country’s democracy. What is certain however is that the man had not only demoted himself but also his country in terms of soft power and the international esteem hitherto enjoyed by the US as the leader of the free world. Undoubtedly, there are quibbles, justified ones at that about the United States’ global role and pedagogy concerning the values and requirements of stable democracy. For example, some have contended that the US does not apply its own moral lessons to the contradictions of its flawed democracy nor does it apply these rules evenly to its allies and opponents. Money politics, the cynicism of Washington political elite, issues of color, race and gender qualify American democracy and the enthusing of right wing scholars who view it as the end of history.

To give two quick illustrations, is it not strange that no woman has ever become the President of the United States or that until 2009, the White House remained, to paraphrase former President Barack Obama, a preserve of whites only? We grant these imperfections and anomalies while affirming that over all, the nobler stratum of political elite in the United States have overtime created a halo and grandeur for the fundamental tenets of democracy especially the pleasant norm of the orderly transfer of power. It is that influential norm that Trump has nearly thrown into the waste paper basket although he belatedly conceded on Wednesday, that there would be an orderly transfer of power. Of course, what else could he have said after being driven to the wall and causing his countrymen especially the military to nervously guess what may happen should Trump and his mobilized supporters decide to carry their defiance beyond the January 20 stipulated date for the swearing-in of the President. Even now and despite Trump’s grudging concession of defeat, it is not clear what his mobilized supporters may still do considering that it is easier to mobilize and arouse a mob than to demobilize it.

However this pans out, the hope is that Americans will think more than twice before casting their lot with a vain and egotistical politician who will rather go for broke than conjecture and accept that he lost an election. Needless to say that the United States is not the only country dangerously in the throes of the tragic consequences of making wrong electoral choices. As the Punch editorial lamented on Thursday, several countries across the globe are repressing free expression and the work of journalists (see the Punch, Thursday, January 9, 2020). If indeed vigilance is the unchanging price of liberty, then the vigil must begin before elections which in Nigeria for example, are increasingly becoming an intramural affair among top echelons of party bosses without reference whatsoever to the teeming masses. Additionally, as a result of apathy, extreme partisanship, chop- chop politics, and the dire impoverishment of the electorate, many countries in the developing world, including Nigeria are faced with the dilemma of what a political scientist described as “voting without choosing” because choices are fundamentally constrained by undemocratic elites. The Trump saga is not only a lesson for Americans but one for all democracies and aspiring democracies to learn from.

-Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona  Professorial Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye.

  

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