DONALD TRUMP TURNS BACK THE CLOCK
When the Founders met in that famous constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787 they were faced with a daunting challenge. The Revolutionary War fought to separate from English King George III had been over for about six years. The fighting really ended with the Battle of Yorktown (a siege really) in 1781, but the formal treaty ending the war hadn’t been signed till 1783.
Before the war had ended the former colonies had been forced to create new governments so that by 1781 when the fighting ended they had already begun functioning as small separate republics. In that same year the last of them had signed on to the Articles of Confederation, a pact which provided for some coordination but did allow them to remain fundamentally independent.
That just did not work well. It was difficult to get a quorum together from the thirteen little republics up and down the coast. When they did meet the subject on many minds was what to do about the money they owed as a result of the War. There were endless boundary disputes as populations began to move west. And, those people in the west needed protection from Indian attack.
So, aristocratic leaders from a majority of the republics found themselves in Philadelphia in a constitutional convention chaired by what seemed to them to be their natural leader, the victorious general in the war with the king, George Washington. Through a long, very hot summer they managed to create a structure for a new stronger central government than the clearly (to them) unworkable Articles.
Their fundamental challenge was to create a stronger government that they could somehow get approved in thirteen republics of varying sizes. The smaller republics (Georgia had about 41,000 whites in 1787) had reason to fear the larger ones (New York had about 330,000, Pennsylvania, 410,000). It was clear that, to gain their approval, the functions and the power the new central government would have to be minimized. Citizens could be only indirectly effected by the new government if it was to gain the republics’ approval
And it worked. The delegates managed to bypass the reluctant state legislatures by having special conventions of citizens actually vote for the new government (the membership of those special conventions was clearly manipulated). It also passed because the technology of the time was so primitive (with almost no roads), that with the best will in the world, a government in far away New York (it started there), would have had difficulty interacting with the hugely scattered citizenry.
So for ordinary citizens nearly all contact with government was with local and with state governments. That pattern was finally broken by Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. The Depression was so devastating that to an emerging majority it seemed clear that the state governments were either unwilling or too overwhelmed to protect their citizens in a genuine emergency. Great economic upheavals or wars could be better financed and coordinated by the central government.
Till now! Donald Trump has decided to return to yesteryear (to return to a time before the New Deal) and to argue that all emergencies must be handled by the individual states. The federal government could now be able to help out some states if their governors are “properly respectful” but the federal government would no longer be responsible.
This change is not a product of principle. Trump has shown no interest in grand constitutional principles in the past. The truth is that his ability to lead a huge complex operation like this is so limited that the states, in self-defense, had to try to fight the pandemic themselves.
We can be sure that this return to the past will be short lived. Republicans (and conservatives more generally) do love the idea of leaving things to state and to local governments. In practice they have accepted the inevitable. Although they may speak disparagingly of Social Security and of Medicare, they know that ending those programs would be politically suicidal. Even in their attacks on Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) today’s conservatives feel the need to promise that it will be replaced by something even better.
Donald Trump’s handling of this tragic pandemic has been uniquely inept. And, at this point with so many effective administrators having been driven from government, we have to assume that any further challenge for government will be handled ineptly too. That does, of course, not augur well for our national economic recovery.
But, Donald Trump has taught the nation a great and valuable lesson. Competency matters! Electing someone to the presidency with no background, experience, or interest in the workings of government (Democrat or Republican) is a recipe for disaster. We have also learned that Americans can still work heroically together. In the future, competent national leadership will allow that heroism to be all the more effective.
H.J. Rishel
5/13/2020
