Last spring, I taught a course at the University of Georgia titled “Contemporary Challenges to Modern Democracy in the United States.” I had gone into the class with anxiety about the fate of our country, but I emerged with hope — a hope that has not been diminished by the reelection of former President Donald Trump.
I know many Democrats are worried about autocracy: that President-elect Trump will demand Congress confirm his appointments without oversight; that he will install his sycophants in public administration; that he will commandeer the budget of the United States through impoundment and other actions to override Congress’ power of the purse; that his autocratic demands will permanently damage the democratic institutions of the country.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Though there is reason to worry about what this might mean, there is nothing like spending time with young people and reflecting on our country’s founding and formative documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” among others — to remind you that this country has endured real crises in the past and has real reasons to be hopeful for the future. Our founding documents are grounded in lofty ideals about freedom and human rights, but they were also written by people who were pragmatic about human nature and who had endured war and serious civil conflict.
Starting with the basics: Remember that high school civics class that covered checks and balances and James Madison’s idea that “ambition checks ambition?” I have good news: Despite its flaws and shortcomings, it really works.
Our institutions don’t work as smoothly as they would seem to on paper. For instance, as both parties have found, impeachment is a weak check on the power of the president. But at the same time, the Constitution sets up competing bases of power, both within the federal government and through our multilayered federalist system. Different branches and layers of government have strong incentives to guard their institutional prerogatives — and this generally kicks in, even when members of different branches of government are all in the same party. Already we are seeing this start to work.
Trump has threatened recess appointments to thwart the Senate’s power of “advice and consent” to get his Cabinet picks into position, but senators are not particularly beholden to the president. They all have their own power bases, their own electoral considerations, and their own ambitions and aspirations, whether policy-related or political. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, barely lifted an eyebrow and Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s utterly unqualified pick for attorney general, withdrew his name from consideration, declaring that he didn’t have the votes to be confirmed by the Senate. To be sure, I don’t think the Republican-controlled Senate is going to do whatever Democrats might like with appointments, but I also do not expect them to be pushovers.
I expect the same response on the budget and the civil service. It is very unlikely that members of Congress, even fervent Trump supporters, are going to willingly cede power. Trump might try to seize some control through executive action and the courts, and he might succeed to some degree. I cannot imagine that this will not be fraught and contested even within his own coalition. Better men than he, with much more sweeping electoral mandates, in a country facing much more serious crises, have tried to assert and expand executive authority, and they also faced serious headwinds that thwarted their ambitions.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who swept in with 472 to 59 electoral votes in 1932 (now that is a landslide), described taking on the military bureaucracy, specifically the Navy: “To change anything in the Navy is like punching a feather bed. You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching.” Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court that was stalling his “New Deal” program and was defeated on that, too.
But could we lose our democracy entirely with future elections becoming merely shams or not even being called at all? One of the things that becomes evident in teaching about American democracy is how democracy permeates every aspect of our lives. We do in fact have the habits of heart and mind to continue these institutions; our young people do as well. It’s not that we don’t need to keep searching for ways to strengthen the virtue of civic participation and engagement, but we are not as far gone as some people seem to fear.
We don’t even realize it, but we are very, very habituated to the processes of democracy. We are constantly voting for an endless array of different officeholders, from our school boards to city governments to counties to state legislatures to statewide officeholders. Dear heavens, in Georgia we even elect our soil conservation district supervisors, our judges, our sheriffs, our tax assessors, our agriculture commissioner — to name just a few. Further, we have many layers of government, each with its own democratically elected officials, its own revenue stream and its own independent scope of authority.
We are suspicious of governmental abuse of power — on the left and on the right. We are constantly complaining about our taxes, our schools, our roads, our police, our public services and we are in a continual dialogue — implicit or explicit — about whether our government is serving us as it should. We are deeply accustomed to the assumption that if things get bad enough, we, as citizens, can make needed changes.
Imagine even if somehow a new Trump administration were to seize autocratic control at the national level — the wheels of democracy would keep churning at the state and local level and would create a powerful pressure for democracy to reassert itself nationally. Democracies have fallen, but American democracy is uniquely layered and multifaceted.
Though I am worried about the road ahead, in this season of gratitude, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on how grateful I am to be alive at this time in this country. Yes, we are going to face chaos and hardship and struggle, and, yes, we are called to the civic virtues of fighting for our future and the country we believe in. But this struggle is nothing new. We have a new generation coming up that is every bit as committed to the project as we are. And I have faith that this crazy and messy country, this great experiment in democracy, will not only endure, it will prevail.
Carolyn Bourdeaux is a former member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th District. She is a contributor to the AJC Opinion page.
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