In Washington, a whisper of authoritarianism

Photo: Cédric Gagnon Le Devoir Donald Trump affaiblit la démocratie américaine, disent des observateurs à Washington.

Marco Bélair-Cirino À Washington

Posted at 12:00 am

• United States

The American democratic experiment has been an object of fascination since its inception. Pretending to study the penitentiary system, French magistrates and aristocrats Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont traveled across the United States in 1831 and 1832 to get a closer look. They observed not only “its inhabitants, its cities, its institutions, its customs,” but also “the mechanism of its republican government.” Tocqueville wrote two iconic works from this 10-month stay: Democracy in America and Fifteen Days in the Desert. Le Devoirfollowed in their footsteps, 193 years later, at a time when this democracy seems more threatened than ever. Last stop: Washington D.C., where a breath of authoritarianism worries many.

Susan remembers January 6, 2021, vividly. The political adviser was on Capitol Hill getting a COVID-19 vaccine when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the hallowed site of American democracy. “Capitol Police officers were running around. I locked myself in my office. I turned off the lights,” she says in the middle of the Rayburn Building, where dozens of representatives — Democrats and Republicans — from across the United States have offices. Shown here is the office of Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland). There, that of Republican Representative Barry Loudermilk (Georgia)…

Over the past few years, the rules of civility have often been abandoned here, Susan notes while pointing to the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump.

She is particularly angry at Republicans who “did not wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and [who] put the health of others at risk,” then supported Donald Trump in his attempts to stop the certification process of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and incited rioters to illegally enter the Capitol to paralyze the democratic process.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont travel across America during the presidency of the champion of the “common man,” Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). The same man who, in 1804, promised $50 to the person who could get their hands on one of his “mulatto slave men” who had “run away.” “And ten dollars more for every hundred lashes that person gives him, up to a maximum of three hundred [lashes].”

The two thinkers came away disappointed from their meeting with the seventh president of the United States in the comfort of the White House. “We talked about rather insignificant things. He made us drink a glass of Madeira wine and we thanked him by calling him Monsieur like the first person to come along,” wrote Gustave de Beaumont to his mother, not without embarrassment.

Just like Tocqueville, he had nevertheless been made aware by Americans of one of the flaws of democracy: the people do not necessarily choose the most enlightened citizen to lead the country.

A “common man” in his own way, Donald Trump hung Andrew Jackson's portrait in the Oval Office in January 2017.

Democracy is naturally threatened, as Plato already pointed out, by the discourse of demagogues, whose citizens prefer lies to the demand for truth, just as they sacrifice, when difficulties arise, the free exercise of liberty and citizenship, which demand courage and responsibility from everyone, to the apparent security of authoritarianism.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Jacksonian democracy, Trumpian democracy

In Jacksonian democracy, the president advocates a more open democracy (to white men). In Trumpian democracy, the president wants to be king.

In any case, Donald Trump has transformed the system of checks and balances at the heart of American democracy to his advantage.

He has put the Republicans under his thumb. He has called the Democrats who stood up to him “the enemy within,” starting with the “so sick” and “so evil” former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former Representative and chief prosecutor in her impeachment trial Adam Schiff. He has said that they could even be “taken care of, if necessary, by the National Guard or, if it’s absolutely necessary, by the military.”

He has also promised to release the rioters of January 6, 2021, to fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds,” and has raised the possibility of suspending the Constitution and dressing up as a dictator, at least on the first day of a possible second term in the White House.

Donald Trump has also packed the justice system with more than 200 conservative judges.

Inside the Supreme Court building, recognizable by its 16 marble columns, you might think that the country’s highest court has ten justices—six conservatives, four liberals—not nine, two-thirds of whom lean right.

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Indeed, items of all kinds—books, stickers, bobbleheads, etc.—bearing the image of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on September 18, 2020, fill the court’s boutique. Bookmarks of the icon of progressive America are even placed next to those of the nine current justices, including the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, who succeeded her and who pulled the court to the right. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a favorite of many,” notes a clerk behind a box of turtle-shaped stress balls. “Our turtles represent longevity and the slow, deliberate pace of justice,” reads one label.

“Supreme Court justices recently ruled that presidents are immune from almost all criminal prosecution. They are turning the president into a king,” argues Michael Sozan, an expert on democracy issues at the American Progress think tank, while pointing out that “Americans’ trust in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low.”

Photo: Marco Bélair-Cirino Le Devoir “Our turtles represent longevity and the slow, deliberate pace of justice,” reads one label.

Reid Dvorak probably wouldn’t say no to a stress-relieving foam turtle. The recent law graduate laments that the Supreme Court—which Donald Trump has taken over by appointing three of the nine justices—is suffering from a legitimacy deficit due to its controversial decisions and ethical failings. “Judges are taking large sums of money and not disclosing it until they’re forced to. That’s very troubling,” he says in the shadow of the marble statue The Guardian or Authority of the Law. “I’ve read the Constitution many times. I understand that the Supreme Court is the third branch of government, that it’s its own branch… But I would like it to bow to ethical rules.” »

Less passion, more discussion

With the election just weeks away, citizen Tessa Galarnyk is concerned not only about a tightening of access to health care such as abortion or an abandonment of the fight against climate change, but also about a crumbling of American democracy, should Donald Trump be re-elected on November 5.

This text is part of our Perspectives section.

The young woman would like to discuss all this with the members of her family who boarded the Make America Great Again (MAGA) train in 2016 and never got off again. “My father followed the movement as it became more radical,” she says, halfway between the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

According to Tessa, the former president and her father are very similar: “The way they talk, the way they lie…” Everything Donald Trump says, her father repeats. “He’s one of those boomer voices on social media,” she says, rolling her eyes. With him, “there’s no room for discussion,” she sums up.

According to Michael Sozan, American democracy is going through “one of the most difficult chapters” in its history. “Democracies are in mortal danger when people can’t agree on basic facts,” says Colorado Sen. Mark Udall’s former chief of staff.

Are America’s democratic institutions strong enough to survive another four years or more of Donald Trump as president ?

“The experiment in American democracy has been going on for almost 250 years, so I’d like to remain optimistic, but this would be the greatest challenge this country has faced since the Civil War,” Sozan says, before adding, “Let me say that our democracy would, at the very least, look very different and be seriously weakened by a second Trump administration.”

Traces from the January 6, 2021, riot are not included on the Capitol tour, as if the staff is trying to stay away from any political debate about whether the event was an attempted coup or a grand show of love ?

“We know of several members of the Capitol Police who put their safety at risk that day to protect elected officials. “These same elected officials today deny the violence of January 6,” a civil servant told Le Devoir.

The guides, however, are in the habit of stopping in the central rotunda and pointing out the dome, where George Washington appears as nothing less than a god for having led the army during the War of Independence and having become the country’s first president. And also for having voluntarily given up power after two terms.

The apotheosis of Washington.

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.