We're not safe while Trump is president. Remove him now to protect us and our future.
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“Enforce the norms” is not exactly a captivating bumper sticker, but it is a compelling rationale for removing President Donald Trump from office, immediately.
We are a nation of laws. We are also a nation of norms, and those norms undergird our democracy. Without them, our laws and institutions would be insufficient to protect the republic our Founders bequeathed us.
Since 1950, there have been well over 200 successful coups worldwide, not because those countries had weak anti-coup laws, but rather because they suffered weak democratic norms.
It is not against the law for a president to knowingly and repeatedly lie to the country, even though regular and extensive dishonesty from a president makes a mockery of democratic decision making.
Until President Donald Trump spent his term making 30,000 false and misleading statements, strong norms dictated honesty. Recall the Republican obsession with Ambassador Susan Rice correctly quoting an incorrect early intelligence community assessment of the events at Benghazi. As far as the GOP was concerned unknowingly repeating an inaccurate statement supplied by executive branch agencies, was sufficiently egregious to render her unfit for membership in the president’s cabinet.
Norms are as important as laws
President Trump rightly claimed that the law governing conflicts of interest specifically exempted him. The importance of the norm against presidents using their official positions to enrich themselves was articulated by no less than President Trump’s favorite Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, who, as a Justice Department official, wrote that “it would obviously be undesirable as a matter of policy for the president or vice president to engage in conduct proscribed” by conflict of interest rules, “whether or not they technically apply.”
No law, strong norm.
While federal law does proscribe candidates from receiving anything of value from a foreign national, no law prohibits a president from asking foreign powers with whom the United States is in conflict to intervene on his behalf in U.S. elections.
Before President Trump begged Russia and China, as well as Ukraine, for electoral help, the norms against such behavior were so strong that no candidate would have dreamed of making such requests.
Lawyers continue to debate whether the president ordering a state election official to “find 11,780 votes,” the number he needed to change the result in Georgia, constitutes a crime, but the widespread condemnation of the conversation by Republicans makes clear it violated a strong norm. No law prevents a president from employing hate speech, though until Trump, presidents didn’t.
But even strong norms erode if they are not enforced.
Sen. Jon Tester: Members of Congress who incited Capitol riot must be held accountable
During impeachment, Republican senators hid behind irrelevant legalisms. Their argument that Trump’s behavior was not criminal altered, perhaps permanently, the Founders’ intent in defining high crimes and misdemeanors as grounds for removal from office.
When the Senate exonerated Trump, they made it more likely that he and potentially, future presidents would ignore the norms that enable our democracy to function. And what was the result? More of the same, but worse. This time the president incited political violence, leading to homicide.
Trump retains too much power to stay
Republicans claimed Trump would be chastened by impeachment, even absent a conviction. They were wrong. Instead Trump was emboldened, and every senator who voted to acquit bears some responsibility for the Trump’s ensuing attack on democracy, culminating in last week’s coup attempt.
Now they’re arguing it’s too late to take action, and besides, this time, Trump really has learned his lesson.
It is not too late to enforce the norms. It is not too late to make a clear and unambiguous statement about the limits of presidential behavior. Failure to do so could damage democracy for decades to come.
President Trump abused his office for personal gain, sowed hatred, lied to America, attempted to subvert the electoral process, and finally incited insurrection and violence. He deserves to be punished for each of those violations of the moral order, even if they are not violations of criminal statutes. But more important, we the people deserve the protection afforded by the norms that ensure our democracy — protection we can only secure by removing Trump, thereby enforcing those norms.
If instead we just wait out the next week until Joe Biden is inaugurated, what will Republicans say if Trump uses his last minutes in office, acting within his legal limits, to pardon the very insurrectionists arrested for attacking the capitol, further eroding democratic norms?
Then, it will be far too late.
Mark Mellman, president of The Mellman Group and past president of the American Association of Political Consultants, has helped elect 30 senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members, and was pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 20 years. Follow him on Twitter: @MarkMellman
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump is too dangerous to stay president while we wait for Joe Biden
