Future of American Constitutional Democracy at Stake in Impeachment Hearings
The impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump will affect the future of his presidency and could affect “the future of the Presidency,” Rep. Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee justly stated. He might have added that what is at stake in the hearings is nothing less than the future of American Constitutional Democracy.
The facts tell us that President Trump told Ukraine’s President Zelensky that his request for an Oval Office meeting and delivery of $400 million in military aid, was contingent upon his pledge to publicly declare an investigation into former vice-president Joe Biden, likely his chief rival in the 2020 election. Trump’s resort to bribery and extortion, otherwise rightly characterized as a shakedown of an American democratic ally in desperate need of military support for its own survival, is the act that raises the issue of his political future, the future of the American Presidency, and the future of America’s Constitutional Democracy.
Trump supporters, including Idaho’s congressional delegation, must face and answer a foundational question: Are they willing to support efforts by this, or any future, president—Republican or Democrat—to abuse the powers of the presidency and leverage the full weight and strength of the U.S. government to solicit foreign interference in American elections for his or her own political benefit?
If they are, let them say so—in print, on television and radio, and before gatherings of Idaho residents in town hall meetings, civic organizations and schools. And if they say so, let it be clearly understood that they are introducing into American politics a regime that is wholly foreign and hostile to our constitutional democracy. Is it to be supposed that they wish to be party to the subversion of the very pillars of our system, one that would destroy the very foundations of America?
A foreign nation in the future that answers an American president’s request for intervention and assistance in defeating a political foe, will want something in return. What is the foreign government’s price for its interference in our elections? Will the scheme be disclosed to the citizenry? Certainly not, which means that the president is subject to blackmail. How will an American president weigh the interests of his American constituents in light of the interests of his foreign constituents? If they are in conflict, on what basis will a president beholden to a foreign power, decide which interests to exalt?
In such dark circumstances, how will Americans understand presidential behavior that tilts toward the obliging foreign government? Indeed, how will the citizenry hold the president accountable for his actions, foreign and domestic? If presidential accountability is unrealistic or unattainable, what becomes of the very concept of American Constitutionalism, which rests on the principle that government must be accountable to the Constitution, the rule of law and the people? Those questions, among others, represent the frailty of American sovereignty, independence and freedom, when a president draws a foreign government into our election.
Americans of every stripe and color should be on guard to prevent foreign interference in our elections. Certainly the Framers of the Constitution were, and they took serious steps to prevent such a menacing threat to our republic. When an American president, in this case President Trump, engages in actions to extort Ukranian interference in the 2020 presidential election, he is flaunting the work and wisdom of our founding fathers. He is, in fact, trying to import into our constitutional system a scheme that is both foreign and hostile to everything that delegates to the Constitutional Convention sought to achieve. That is what is at stake in these impeachment hearings.
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David Adler is president of the Alturas Institute, established to protect American Democracy by promoting the Constitution, civic education, gender equality and the rule of law. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution and presidential power, including the law of impeachment.