What's a prez to do? Trump and the 2020 election

Presidents make big decisions. It comes with the office.

How big a presidential decision is can take time to tell. John Adams's decision to nominate John Marshall for chief justice seemed innocuous at first, given the modest role the Supreme Court had played in American life until then. But during the next thirty-five years Marshall transformed the judicial branch of government into an equal partner of the legislative and the executive. Dwight Eisenhower's decision to seek funding for the interstate highway system continues to shape American life seven decades on.

The effects of Donald Trump's decision to reject the legitimacy of Joe Biden's 2020 election are still playing out. No president before Trump failed to concede following an unsuccessful campaign. Some did so while the popular votes were still being counted. All did so after the electoral votes had been tallied. Trump refused, and he continues to claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump's denial prompted the first violent attack in American history on the certification of the electoral vote by Congress. The January 6, 2021 attack was ultimately repelled, and Biden was duly inaugurated.

Possibly this sort of challenge to the electoral process won't be repeated. On the other hand, it might be an augury of the demise of our system of presidential elections. It's too soon to tell which.

Trump's denialism is at the heart of his campaign to regain the White House. If Trump loses in November, and if his defeat is acknowledged by the Republicans, then Trump's refusal to accept reality will probably be seen as a personal quirk not to be emulated. But if he wins, refusal to concede defeat might become standard in American politics. The sine qua non of democracy is the willingness to accept defeat in elections. Take that away, and democracy won't last long.

A puzzle for any student of the presidency observing Trump's behavior is how much of what he does is sincere and how much cynical. The question has arisen with many other politicians, not to mention people in other walks of life. But with no previous president has the question been so persistent and so portentous. Does Trump actually believe that a fair count in 2020 would have given him victory? If he does, then he's not lying but delusional. If he doesn't believe it, he’s simply a liar. 

Fool or knave? This question often applies to decision-makers who decide badly. In the realm of presidential politics, it can apply as well to supporters of a president. Do Trump's supporters truly believe the 2020 election was stolen? Or do they just go along with the fiction knowing it's fiction?

Some Trump supporters follow a third path. They admit Trump lost in 2020 but continue to back him anyway. Yet in doing so they abet his strategy and  will be complicit in its consequences.

Trump's decision to reject reality might turn out not to be a big deal. But there’s a very real possibility that it will be the biggest decision ever made by a president. If his denialism proves to be a winning strategy in November, and if denialism becomes a norm in American politics, and if it fatally undermines democracy, then no president will have ever made a more momentous decision.

And we will have let it happen. In America we get the presidents we deserve. We voted them into office. Sometimes we have the excuse of being surprised. A candidate misled us about who he was.

This excuse doesn't apply to Trump. He's certainly misled people. But by now we know who he is. If we elect him again, it's on us.

A natural response of Democrats and others who don’t vote for Trump will be: It's not on us.  It's the fault of those idiots who voted for Trump. That answer doesn't wash. For a losing political party to blame voters for its defeat is as fatuous as for a failing company to blame customers for not buying its products. Anyway, we're all in this democracy thing together. We all keep it or we all lose it. 

Democrats should look in the mirror and ask what they've done to enable a candidate with Trump's baggage to have a prayer of beating Biden. The short answer is: by carrying arguably worthy causes to unarguably divisive extremes. The Republicans may have lost their soul, but the Democrats have lost their mind.

And together we might lose what a quarter millennium of American voters and elected officials worked very hard to create.