The ongoing Congressional Impeachment proceedings are revealing some ugly beliefs that are presumably held not only by our President, but also the Republican Party…which controls most of our Federal government right now.
As the facts of the Ukrainian bribery scheme are becoming solidified in the hearings, the President and his GOP protectors have stooped very low to divert attention from, and make excuses for, President Trump’s sophomoric “policy” initiatives intended to leverage American foreign aid to compel Ukrainian assistance in smearing a likely 2020 Presidential election opponent.
The lies, the misdirection efforts, the amateurish cover-up moves, and the denials in the face of facts are to be expected, I guess, when a perpetrator has been caught dead to rights.
However, the latest comments by the President and his group of GOP enablers are very troubling, as they imply a very unusual interpretation of how the Federal government is supposed to work.
This past week, sworn witnesses at the hearings have been bombarded with angry tweets from the President and attacked by aggressive G.O.P. questioners at the hearing itself regarding their loyalty and patriotism, despite the fact that these are very high ranking government officials who, up until this moment, were considered excellent Federal employees.
The terms “non-elected bureaucrats”, “Never Trumpers”, and members of “the Swamp” and/or “The Deep State” have been bandied about, accusatorially, to denigrate the whistleblowing and truth-telling of the witnesses. The President has publicly called out these patriots as “human scum”.
All of these “traitors” work for Donald Trump, in theory, and he appointed some of them himself. They were fine folks, until they upheld their oath to serve their country…instead of President Trump himself.
And, there it is: President Trump thinks he IS the government, not a part of it. He thinks that he is above the law, not beholden to it. He either misunderstands his role in our form of democracy or has never had any intention to accept that role.
The ongoing political issue for Donald Trump remains: He was elected to office despite losing the popular vote by 3 million, and about 1/3 of the eligible voters didn’t vote at all. So, his hard rock “base” of support represents at most maybe one-sixth of all eligible voters. He needs to retain all of them and garner a crapload of undecided votes to get re-elected.
He continues to alienate many of those undecideds by doing and saying stupid things.
For example, ninety-nine percent of the employees who work for the Federal government are “unelected bureaucrats”, to use his term. They vote. President Trump has, from day one of his Administration, gone overboard in chastising, embarrassing, insulting, and minimizing these folks who actually make HIS government function. This week, he is generally dismissing the entire State Department as a pack of traitors, but in past months has said the same about the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Federal Judiciary.
When President Trump lies, those bureaucrats had better cover for him. When he makes a stupid mistake, they’d better accept the blame. When he does something illegal, his attorneys damn well better figure out a way to avoid the posse. Because if they don’t, they’ll get tossed under the bus. Countless number of Trump appointees have been run over by the President when they wouldn’t play the game by his rules or parrot his incessant lies.
The underlying problem for Mr. Trump is that the Federal government is not whatever the President wants it to be. Sure, he can steer the ship, but he cannot re-configure the ship on the fly, on his own.
The Federal government is, first and foremost, governed by the Constitution, which the President can’t change on his own, and which he has sworn to defend and protect. The Federal government is also defined by all of the laws which have been enacted by Congress over the past couple of hundred years. The President is bound by those laws as well, and he can’t ignore them at his own choosing.
The “bureaucracy” that the President and the GOP seem to despise consists of the hundreds of thousands of Federal workers who implement those laws on a daily basis, and who try to effectuate change (within the law) as directed by the White House, pursuant to new policy directives (which must also conform to existing laws).
The fact that our Nation’s governmental operation moves forward without skipping a beat when the Administration changes hands (from Obama to Trump, for example) is a testament to those “unelected bureaucrats” who go to work each day and do their jobs. How would it be if a new Administration had to totally repopulate the Federal government machinery with new “loyal” employees on Inauguration Day? It would be absolute CHAOS, because no one would know their job, and inexperienced political hacks would be running our prisons, our military, processing Social Security benefits, and such.
This is what President Trump seems to want and expect: that from Inauguration Day forward, the highest priority of all Federal employees will be loyalty and obedience to their new President.
Ergo, we have a President right now who is not committed to our Constitutional form of government. He wants to do what he wants to do, whether it makes sense or is illegal. “Get onboard or get out of the way!”
The entire Impeachment Proceedings center around this issue: is the President bound by the Constitution and our laws, or can he make up his own model of government on the fly, with his own self-interest the key motivating factor.
The GOP seems to be willing to allow him to do that, while the Democratic Party seems reluctant to throw out our Constitutional form of government.
Is our democracy perfect? Hardly. But, do we really want a corrupt, kleptocratic dictatorship in its place?
That is the real issue in Washington D.C. this month.