" 'Run, run,' said the bird....

Rick Perlstein, whose books chart the rise of modern conservatism, discusses the wide-ranging effects of Richard Nixon’s pardon. https://t.co/QBO95bjd1K

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) January 15, 2021

One of the things that’s blowing my mind is that what we have heard from Republicans is, “This is divisive, and we need to look forward and not backward.” And what we heard from Democrats is very powerful moral witness about what this breach meant to the American constitutional order and arguments about why Donald Trump is responsible. What we’re not hearing is that the President of the United States has sole and unreviewable power to use nuclear weapons. Now, in that sense, we don’t have a Constitution. The President is sovereign. He has the power of life and death over the planet. So, I mean, he has to be removed from office, right? But we don’t see that argument. I wonder if there’s a sense that the public can’t handle the truth, that this is almost too much. This idea that there’s only so much reckoning that the American people can handle is the structural thing back behind all of this. 

This may be true.  It also may be the ultimate elitism (ironically).  It's certainly a question of democracy, and what democracy actually is.  After all, the people are the sovereign.  But can they handle the reckoning of their decisions, or their failure to decide? None of us do, but what do you do when the truth will drive the sovereign mad?  And don't we face that situation right now, and until noon on January 20th?  Isn't that why there are so many reports of what staffers are left in the White House avoiding the POTUS?

Before we go too far down that path, let's put this in the context of Mr. Perlstein's view of American history, at least as it relates to national politics:

Your historical project has tried to tell a story of American conservatism after the Second World War, and Barry Goldwater, as somewhat of a coherent story. Is what we saw on January 6th somewhat of a culmination of that story? Or do you think that there have been some important breaks that got us to this point?

I have two answers for that. The one is actually something that takes the semi-coherent narrative back almost to the founding of the nation, which is to the reactionary minoritarianism behind the Constitutional Convention and the South saying, “We’re not going to be part of this deal unless we put rules into place to guarantee that we have a veto power over the rest of the country deciding slavery is wrong.” Throughout the nineteenth century the South in various ways was trying to extend that logic, devolving into the force of arms when the parliamentary part of that project failed. We see that kind of reactionary minoritarianism in, for example, a rule within the Democratic Party that, until 1936, you had to have two-thirds of the delegates to be a Presidential nominee. That was the South’s veto, the white-supremacy veto.

And then, with the civil-rights movement, when you began to see this challenge to white supremacy, one of the things that happened is that reactionary minoritarianism devolved again into force of arms, which basically happens every time. And then you get the fact that the Republican Party makes a conscious decision to nominate an anti-civil-rights Presidential candidate [Barry Goldwater] in 1964. You see, basically, this project of making sure that the reactionary part of America has operational control, whether they’re in the majority or not, and whenever that seems to be under threat, we see more and more hysteria, more and more conspiracy theories, more and more violence. So, in that sense, it’s the apotheosis of something we’ve seen since the founding.

In another sense, Trump does really represent a break from the way the Republican Party has negotiated its bargain with demagoguery. There’s always been an element of that. You saw some of that with [Senator Joe] McCarthy, but there’s also been a disciplining function by the more establishment part of the Republican Party. So George W. Bush is willing to start a war on false pretenses, exploiting the anger that the country feels over 9/11 at the Arab world, but he also says, “Islam is peace.” Donald Trump, of course, feels no such compunctions. That’s both a continuation and a discontinuity. And now, basically, they’re learning the same thing that every kind of creature in Greek mythology learns when they tempt the gods.

I remember when the Tea Party started, a lot of liberals said, “Well, if these Tea Party lunatics get nominated for Senate seats, they’re going to lose those seats.” And in fact, Republicans did lose a lot of Senate seats because these people were too crazy. At the same time, it seems pretty clear after the past four years that, even if the insanity of one party leads to a few election losses, in a two-party system, you fundamentally need both parties to be sane, or you’re in a very bad place. And, with that in mind, what is the recipe to get a saner G.O.P.?

I don’t think Democrats have agency to change the Republican Party. But I do think that they have agency to weaken the Republican Party so that they have operational control of the government and can legislate in the interests of the majority of Americans. I mean, don’t forget that, alongside Donald Trump, we have Mitch McConnell literally turning the filibuster into a routinized process to make it impossible for legislation to pass. So, it all fits together.

The Democratic Party should endeavor to defeat the Republican Party. I see a lot of confusion among younger, more progressive Democrats, when Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi says, “We need a strong Republican Party.” I know what they mean. They’re following that neo-Madisonian insight that if there’s only one party, that party will be tempted to tyranny. The fascinating thing is, I don’t think that theory really holds because the Democratic Party itself is such a coalition with such strong, contending, moderate and leftist factions.

And I think he's right about what the Democrats can hope to do, although it has (as most analysis of such large issues does) that "And then a miracle occurs" quality in the ill-defined step two:

I wasn’t saying the Democratic Party will be tempted to tyranny but that, in a two-party system, each party is going to win sometimes. And if one is really bad, that’s going to be really bad for the country. Is the best people can do just to hope for Democratic wins?

That’s the best they can do. Look, I mean, when Richard Nixon was defeated and a new class of Democrats came into Congress, some good stuff happened. Gerald Ford had to sign some legislation that made our air and water a lot cleaner. One of the reasons I’m very hesitant to speculate about what happens next in history is, no one really saw Reagan coming. The idea that someone who never criticized Richard Nixon over Watergate would soon be seen as the redeemer of the country, or that a figure like Jimmy Carter, who seemed to have met the moment, turned out to be such a disappointment—that’s why I’m trying to kind of keep it simple, stupid. What the Democratic Party needs to do is to govern compassionately and well for the broad majority of the country and not negotiate with itself.

Although he's more pragmatic than my statement about his statement may leave you thinking he is:

A lot of people are comparing the report that McConnell is open to removal to Goldwater’s behavior during Watergate. [In 1974, Goldwater and the Republican Senate and House leaders told Nixon that they did not have the votes to prevent his removal, triggering Nixon’s resignation.] What did you think of that?

I think the American people and especially the American media love for people to comfort them with the belief that reconciliation is possible, and thus I think that the role of Goldwater in Watergate is profoundly overestimated. It was just to give Nixon the news that if he takes us to the outermost, he’s going to lose, and that’ll be a humiliation. It wasn’t looking Richard Nixon in the eye calling him to his senses. So, I think whatever Mitch McConnell’s up to, and I don’t intend to grasp the folds and recesses of his mind, it’s not that.

I read recently that Nixon had already considered resignation when the GOP Senators came to see him, and they almost convinced him not to just out of defiance to the demand.  And then he decided his first idea, resignation, was the better course; for him, of course.  If McConnell wants Trump out, it's because he's pissed over being chased from the Senate by thugs while Trump cackled with glee in the White House.  Good enough, but don't make more of it than it is.