At least some of the illusions of Donald Trump’s first term are gone. One hears very little of the then-prevalent chatter, coming mostly from the pundit class, about institutional “guardrails.” If they existed at all, those guardrails were constructed of papier-mâché. We are reminded of the quote by Britain’s first U.N. ambassador, Alexander Cadogan, when reflecting on mid-20th-century totalitarianism: “What forces itself to one’s attention is the degree to which everything favours the evildoer, if he is blatant enough.”
Should electoral democracy survive the next three years and more humane and decent people be charged with running the government, what can they do to reinstitutionalize democracy, or, more simply, to Trump-proof the political system? We know what won’t work: back to normal, return to the status quo, “turning the page.” That’s what Joe Biden tried to do, possibly with the advice of the same political consultants who have turned the cliché about “kitchen table issues” into a tiresome mantra. While Biden’s instincts were honorable, he, along with other administration actors like Attorney General Merrick Garland, were wrong. It couldn’t work; the status quo ante to which they wanted to return was riddled with the same flaws that led inexorably to Trump in the first place.
