Election 2020’s fundamental question: ‘What defines America?’
President Donald Trump has spent much of the past four years pushing boundaries and breaking through norms and traditions that have long defined American democracy.
He’s declined to sever ties with his businesses while in office, saying “the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” During a summit with the Japanese prime minister, the president’s Mar-a-Lago club charged the government $3 for Mr. Trump’s own glass of water.
He’s tried to harness the powers of U.S. justice for his own benefit, publicly pushing his attorney general to jail political adversaries such as former President Barack Obama for unsubstantiated “treasonous” actions.
He’s attacked in advance the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, falsely saying mail-in balloting is inherently fraudulent. He tells his supporters that Democrats can win only if voting is “rigged.”
In many ways President Trump may simply be the apotheosis of long-standing strains and problems with the great machinery of democratic governance established by the Constitution in 1788. The rise of toxic, tribal partisanship has made the nation’s political combat much fiercer. Both parties are beginning to regard the other as not just opponents, but perhaps enemies. Both may be beginning to lose faith in the fairness of the rules of the U.S. political system.
But on top of these existing problems, Mr. Trump has piled an “extraordinary rhetorical audacity and recklessness” that has had “severe costs,” in the words of Obama White House counsel
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