In October 1798, John Adams wrote that the Constitution requires a moral people. A republic is a nation of laws, not a nation governed by one person. Adherence to those laws, without the constant threat of forceful compliance, requires the American people to buy into the system and work together to uphold the republic. The Jan. 6 hearings reveal this central, characteristic, and fatal flaw in the Constitution.
The last seven years have revealed just how much of our government is based on norms and customs. There are relatively few restrictions on the president’s behavior written in code or statute. The Constitution says even less. And yet there are things the president is not supposed to do.
The president is not supposed to shill for a certain brand of beans from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. The president is not supposed to host military parades for his own glorification. The president is not supposed to amplify white supremacist accounts online. And those are only the cringeworthy examples.
What about the examples that have significant ramifications for our republic? The president is not supposed to question the validity of the election, the president is not supposed to lie about electoral fraud, the president is not supposed to surround himself with conspiracy theorists and charlatans.
Yet, the framers of the Constitution understood that men are imperfect and prone to corruption once faced with power. Therefore, the Constitution offers a few important recourses when the president acts inappropriately. First, the American people can vote the president out of office. Second, the Constitution also permits Congress to impeach the president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Impeachment has proven to be a relatively rare tool in the nation’s history. Impeachment proceedings have only moved through the House of Representatives four times in U.S. history. And presidential elections only occur every four years. Both methods of recourse assume politicians will falter, and both methods assume the American people will remain moral enough to hold their leaders accountable. There is a third, unspoken option as well.
In the last 200 years, many politicians have been forced from office due to scandal or wrongdoing. Citizens have objected to their behavior, forced them to feel shame, and used public pressure to compel a resignation.
This recourse requires citizens to embrace a shared morality that designates certain behaviors as unacceptable. For example, this sense of morality, the power of shame, and the impact of scandal forced Eliot Spitzer to resign as governor of New York in 2008. Similarly, Richard Nixon resigned as president to avoid impeachment in 1974 once public outrage had undermined his support among Republicans in Congress.
Morality no longer applies. The first several January 6 Committee hearings proved that former President Donald Trump didn’t just disregard many of the norms and customs that had previously limited presidential behavior. He lied repeatedly about the outcome of the 2020 election, cheered on violent mobs threatening the life of his own vice president, and actively tried to undermine the electoral process—the very bedrock of our democracy.
The American people did take advantage of one of the key recourses and voted for someone else in November 2020. But when Congress brought forth articles of impeachment for Trump’s role in the insurrection, Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit Trump. They no longer cared about Trump’s bad behavior. Shame had no impact.
Trump appears poised to run again in 2024 and all evidence suggests he would be the frontrunner for the Republican Party nomination. At the very least, he remains the unquestioned leader of the party, even if he’s not in office. Despite all of the evidence presented in the last few weeks, most Republicans still support Trump, and the overwhelming majority of Republican voters would vote for him again.
The hardcore minority of the MAGA base might approve of Trump’s disregard for our political norms and customs. Most of his voters, however, tolerated his worst actions because they couldn’t fathom voting for a Democrat. The partisan divisions have become so inflexible that voters will tolerate any sin as long as it’s in their tribe and they don’t have to vote for the other team.
But the Constitution does not work if we care more about our political team than our nation. The Constitution does not work if the American people and their representatives abandon a shared morality. If we simply shrug our shoulders when confronted with evidence that the president incited and cheered on a violent insurrection, the Constitution is broken.
Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ph.D. is a presidential historian and Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. She is also the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, now out in paperback, and the forthcoming book An Honest Man: The Inimitable Presidency of John Adams. She can be followed on Twitter @lmchervinsky
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