The United States has had, prior to Donald Trump, 44 presidents. (Arguably we’ve had 43, but the guardians of historical pedantry long ago decreed that Grover Cleveland, who served nonconsecutive terms, would be counted as two.) There’s no reason our descendants shouldn’t enjoy at least another 44—and, one hopes, even more.
But there’s also no reason to assume the American experiment in self-government will chug along forever, automatically and unproblematically. Abraham Lincoln commented in 1838 that if the experiment were to fail, the danger would “spring up amongst us. . . . If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Lincoln did not believe that destruction would be impossible. To the contrary, he was concerned in 1838 that we might be drifting toward such an outcome. “I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us.”
Civil war came less than a quarter-century later.
Can we say there is nothing of ill-omen among us? We can’t. For decades, our constitutional fabric has been weakened by many trends and various doctrines. Are the institutions that are needed to keep our free government robust as strong as they should be? They are not.
And now we have, not to put too fine a point on it, a talented demagogue as president. Demagogues have always been among us, and have always been understood as a threat to liberal democracy. They appeal to the people and claim to speak for the people. President Trump asserted in his inaugural address that “we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American people.” Power to the people! What’s not to like?
Well, as Federalist 51 points out, “a dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
Two of those precautions—the first intended by the Founders, the other not—are the Constitution (and the reverence thereof) and the party system. Both serve to check the unbridled ambition of unscrupulous individuals, of demagogues. In a short piece published on Inauguration Day (officially dubbed by our new president a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion”), Harvey Mansfield noted that Trump, “the declared enemy of the establishment, finds himself president by the agency of two of its institutions: the Republican Party that rallied to him and the Constitution [via its Electoral College] that saved him.”
So the Republican party has a special obligation. Having rallied to him, Republicans have a particular responsibility to check their own chieftain when necessary. Others in the constitutional order have their own roles and duties, which they can be expected to play. Republicans, by contrast, will be under pressure to rally only and not to check.
Rally they certainly should—and enthusiastically—when Trump administration policies are worthy. We trust there will be many such occasions. But check they must when the Constitution and the country require it. This of course isn’t why most Republicans ran for office. It’s not the primary reason other Republicans will have accepted positions in the new administration. Checking and correcting and challenging a Republican president are not likely to be well-received, at least at first, by Republican voters across the country.
No matter. It is a burden Republicans must bear. They and only they will be in a position, in some circumstances at least, to act to prevent demagoguery from overwhelming deliberation, to stop willfulness and arbitrariness from replacing reflection and choice. Indeed, if they fail to take on this responsibility, it is not clear others could do so in their place.
But surely this is a burden not simply to be borne but to be embraced. Every party wants to claim that when the chips are down, it can and will act on behalf of the country. For the Republican party to stand successfully, where fitting and proper, both in private and if need be in public, against a Republican president would be an impressive accomplishment. It would be one not inferior to the Grand Old Party’s previous achievements.
It was, after all, a recent Republican presidential candidate whose partisan slogan was “Country First.” He had no chance to put such a promise into effect. Now Republicans have such an opportunity. And there are worse things to be remembered for than as a party that put country first.
