Pro- and anti-Trump camps on the political Right are mostly fighting about whether and when results are more important than proper process.
When Trump was campaigning in 2016, longtime conservative allies kept repeating that the nation’s political system was so corrupt and calcified that we needed to “burn it down.”
Those appalled by Trumpism generally see this “burn it down” approach as the moral and logical equivalent of the well-known Vietnam War quote about the time “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Those in the “burn it down” camp, however, argue that our political-cultural situation now is such a threat to the survival of America’s essential greatness that it’s time for radical triage.
The rough equivalent is that of President Abraham Lincoln suspending the constitutional right of habeas corpus because “saving the union” was a matter of existential importance.
In the Ukraine-related controversy, the burn camp essentially argues that because they think it’s evident the Biden family is sleazy, the president is justified in using his power to prove it. He is the president, after all. Concerns about how a Biden probe is generated or conducted thus become mere “process issues” of lesser importance than the goal of discovering whether the Bidens actually broke the law.
In most cases, this “some ends justify most means” attitude goes hand in hand with a tendency to support, rather than distrust, expansive executive authority. This is an admittedly broad generalization, but largely fair. Those who are results-oriented tend to see efficiency and decisive action as nearly paramount virtues, and they see presidential prerogatives as necessary elements for action.
Those of us on the “protect-the-process” side see untethered presidential power as far more a threat to liberty than a means for safeguarding it. We distrust concentrated power. We also believe procedural channels are crucial for keeping the ship of state on course. The point of the restrictions is not to hamper effective action but to enable real enterprise for both the short-term and longer horizons, without fear of systemic crash or malicious abuse.
To be clear, we’re not talking about obeisance to minute, obscure, bureaucratic rules. We’re concerned with the broad constitutional-procedural guidelines designed, in James Madison’s words, to “oblige [the government] to control itself.”
In the end, we hold dearly to the original insistence by Madison that the structure of our government itself, with its partly separated and partly overlapping powers, is the greatest guarantor of liberty. The solution, Madison writes, lies in “so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”
That’s why it matters to us whether the president makes an end run around our own justice system to sic a foreign government on one of our president’s rivals. We believe that even if the rivals are found guilty of something, the long-term damage done to “the interior structure of the government” isn’t worth the finding of guilt.
Means vs. ends. Process vs. immediate results. Decide for yourself which emphasis should reign. Either way, we should take seriously the concerns and values, if sincere, of the other side.
