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It’s often been said and something that has become increasingly important in this moment in our American history: Americans reject the president, not our democracy. That distinction may sound simple, but it’s anything but. Because our democracy is not Donald Trump. Democracy is not Joe Biden. Democracy is not Republicans or Democrats. Democracy is not whoever happens to occupy the Oval Office at a particular moment in history.
Democracy is the system that says the government belongs to the people — and no individual owns it. The president is a temporary leader, limited by terms. The republic is not.
That is why the world finds the spectacle of this presidency so troubling. This president has managed to turn the office of the presidency into a caricature of itself. This office that is supposed to represent the United States has increasingly become a stage for personal grievance, personal loyalty, personal vindication and personal power.
Everything seems to circle back to the man himself. His enemies. His victories. His grievances. His loyalty. His money. His reputation. His political survival. And, perhaps most troublingly, his elections.
There is something almost surreal about watching a president repeatedly return to the subject of an election lost years ago. It reminiscent of someone continually returning to the scene of a crime — not necessarily because the crime has been solved, but because the person remains obsessed with what happened there.
The 2020 election has become a kind of psychological landmark in American political life. Rather than simply accepting that American voters made a decision, the election became something that had to be explained away.
The problem with that mentality isn’t merely that it is politically ugly. It is dangerous. Because democracy cannot function if losing an election automatically becomes evidence that the election was stolen. A candidate is allowed to lose. A president is allowed to lose. A political movement is allowed to lose. That is the entire point of voting in a democracy.
The peaceful transfer of power is not an embarrassing technicality of American democracy. It is one of its greatest achievements. And yet here we are, watching the machinery surrounding elections become another battlefield for presidential politics. This is where we need to stop pretending that all of this is simply another partisan disagreement. It isn’t.
The president has a role in federal government and federal election law, but the president does not personally administer America’s elections. States and local jurisdictions do much of that work. Our democratic voting system was deliberately constructed so that no president would simply control the machinery that determines whether he remains president. No Kings! Remember.
That should not be controversial. It should be one of the easiest principles in American government to defend. Yet somehow we have reached a point where defending the independence of democratic institutions can itself become a partisan act. That is how dangerous normalization works.
First, something is extraordinary. Then it becomes familiar. Then it becomes excusable. Eventually someone says, “That’s just how he is.” And we move on. Americans don’t want to move on. Americans should not become so accustomed to political corruption, dishonesty, retaliation and institutional warfare that we stop being offended by it.
Americans don’t want to lower the standard simply because the person failing to meet it is powerful. And we certainly don’t want to convince ourselves that integrity no longer matters because politics has become a contest in which everyone is presumed to be equally corrupt. They are not.
Neither should we pretend that every political disagreement is evidence of corruption. That would be just another form of intellectual dishonesty. Politicians can make bad decisions without being criminals. Presidents can be wrong without being tyrants. Political opponents can be misguided without being enemies of the country.
But there is a difference between ordinary political disagreement and a political culture in which personal loyalty becomes more important than institutional responsibility. There is a difference between ambition and obsession. There is a difference between campaigning to win and changing the rules because you cannot accept losing. And there is a difference between governing for the American people and treating government as an extension of personal power.
That distinction matters because the damage caused by a presidency doesn’t necessarily disappear when the occupant leaves office. The waves continue, they move through institutions and through political parties. They move through families and through communities. They move through the way Americans talk to one another. They move through our expectations of what elected officials are allowed to do, and that may ultimately be the greatest danger.
Not that the president is uniquely powerful. But that millions of Americans could become accustomed to standards that should never have been lowered in the first place. Often America is thought of as a ship. America has been here before. We have had presidents who abused power. We have had political corruption.
We have endured civil war, segregation, economic collapse, political scandal and wars that tore the country apart.
There have been moments when Americans wondered whether the country could hold together. And yet the ship righted itself and it still certain it will again. But it doesn’t means America won’t list badly first. We may.
The United States may emerge from this period with diminished international credibility. It may have to rebuild relationships that took generations to establish. It may have to demonstrate to allies that American commitments are more durable than the personality of the president occupying the White House. American will have to earn back trust. And perhaps that is the price of what happens when a nation allows its standards to deteriorate.
America’s power has never been based solely on how many aircraft carriers we have or how large our economy is. America’s greatest power has also been the Idea of America. The belief that democratic government can work. The belief that power can change hands without bloodshed. The belief that institutions can survive individual leaders. The belief that a president can lose an election and leave office. The belief that the law applies to those who govern as well as those who are governed.
Those ideas are forms of power. When the world trusts them, America is stronger. When the world doubts them, America is weaker. That is why it’s not simply a question of whether the president will be remembered as a good president or a bad president. History will have plenty of arguments about that.
The larger question is whether his presidency becomes an inflection point. Will historians eventually look back at this period and say that this was when the long decline of American global power became unmistakable? Perhaps. Great powers rarely collapse because of one person. Decline is usually more complicated. Economic changes, demographic shifts, wars, technological developments, political instability and international competition all matter.
But history still needs markers. Sometimes there is a presidency, an election, a war or a crisis that becomes the line historians draw across the timeline. Before. After. This president could become one of those markers. Not because one small man was powerful enough to destroy America. He wasn’t, America is much bigger than one bloviating president.
But because his presidency may have exposed just how much strain already existed beneath the surface. And perhaps that is where the hope remains. America does not need to become what this president wants it to be. America can decide what it wants to be. We can raise the standards again.
We can make competence matter again. We can make public service mean service again. We can make corruption embarrassing again. We can demand that elected officials serve the Constitution rather than themselves. We can rebuild relationships with allies. Americans can restore faith in institutions without pretending those institutions are perfect.
We can disagree politically without treating our fellow Americans as enemies. And we can remember that democracy does not mean getting the president we want. It means having the power to reject the president we don’t want. That is the point we need to keep coming back to. Americans clearly rejects this president, not our democracy.
Citizens don’t reject America because we believe its president has failed us. We don’t reject democracy because democracy sometimes produces terrible leaders. We don’t reject the Constitution because someone in power attempts to bend it toward his own interests. Quite the opposite.
We believe in democracy precisely because it gives the American people the ability to say no. No, you don’t own the government. No, you don’t own the elections. No, you don’t own our Constitution. No, your personal interests don’t supersede the public interest. No, the presidency doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to us — We the People.
That phrase is not decorative language at the beginning of the Constitution. It is the foundation. And perhaps when this period is finally over, that will be what America remembers. We have been here before. We have listed before. We have taken on water before. And somehow, imperfectly and sometimes painfully, the ship of America has found its balance and will again.
But when it does, let’s hope we don’t simply congratulate ourselves for surviving. Let’s hope we ask what allowed the ship to list in the first place. Let’s hope we raise the standards that were lowered. Let’s hope we rebuild the trust that was squandered. And let’s hope we remember that America’s greatness was never supposed to depend upon the greatness of one man.
The president is temporary. Our republic is not. And America can reject a president without rejecting itself.
