If America were a Dairyland, it managed to sell for more than 244 years what the world accepted as the highest quality cheese, of the fullest-body, and smoothest texture. It was masterfully branded as Constitutional Democracy.
But a recent cut by a Donald J. Trump, master salesman himself, proved America’s cheese to be far from solid, definitely not smooth, a Swiss cheese full of holes made by hot gas.
Hot gas is indeed what is popping up all over America and it is the perfect example of the holes in America’s Constitutional Democracy. Half of America is aghast. The other half is delighted and celebrating.
But a block full of holes is far from the sturdy base for a world-class nation, and America has yet to realize how close to collapse it is by pressure upon air ready to pop and to burst with catastrophic effects.
The master salesman keeps slicing, cutting into the American fable and showing it to be far more hole than ever thought. Structurally, that is a weakness. The greater the holes, the greater the weakness, the greater the weakness, the greater the peril of structural collapse. Constitutional Democracy is in danger of crashing down.
For all the weaknesses exposed by Trump’s cut, none is as glaring or as damaging to its “Smooth Transition” slogan than the election process which declares no official winner until months after the election and, worse, that leaves different government branches to decide whether the election is final.
Now, as it turns out, none of this was ever noticed before because the holes were covered by the decency and honour of the people in charge. That was a long lucky streak.
But America’s luck has run out. Trump is not a man of honour nor decency, say his critics. And he is earnestly proving them right.
Upon what Trump’s own appointed cybersecurity chief called “the cleanest election in history,” and one that showed “no evidence of large-scale voter fraud,” America’s president, defeated in those elections, refuses to accept the obvious defeat, throwing one baseless accusation after another, scrambling his people out to find evidence of his supposition, filing what the courts have determined to be baseless lawsuits, and making loud noise in the media in what has become a post-election as messy-as-spilt-sour-milk, and as fetid as the worst whiff after cutting cheese.
Trump has instructed his government not to concede in their speak that he has lost the election. Former vice-president Joe Biden is by all measures the winner of the election and the presumptive president-elect. Ahhh, but those holes. By Trump edict, no one in government is to refer to Biden as president-elect.
What is more, of less honour, some would say, is Trump’s refusal to prepare for an upcoming transition of power. His administration has refused to provide the Presidential Daily Briefing, PDB, and threat analysis to Biden, cooperation traditionally accorded to incoming presidents by outgoing administrations in order to safeguard national security— just imagine the advantage it would have meant to an adversary like the Soviet Union to be provided with the gift of such a gap.
Since Trump called “Russia, are you listening?” as he requested the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 election, he has been accused of caring more about Russia’s interests than America’s. But Trump has made it a point to say that his approach is “America first.”
More than 73,438,000 Americans approved of Trump with their vote for him in the last election. But it was not enough to match the approval of Biden’s message with some 79,201,648 votes and 306 Electoral College votes vs. Trump’s 232, the same margin of Trump’s touted “landslide” victory four years ago, a victory he has re-lived in rally after rally, as a way of touting his “mandate” from the American people.
But now, Trump claimed fraud before fraud occurred — before the election. Just as he had in 2016. Except that now he lost and he is not taking the election results and not giving an inch. “I concede nothing,” he tweeted recently.
As it happens, in America because of its lack of a central organ to determine the outcome until at least December, it is the concession speech that stands down the army of supporters, stops the electoral battle and gets the transition process underway.
It has been day-by-day cooperation and bringing the new administration up-to-date that has ensured the seamless move from one government to each other in previous transitions, guaranteeing the protection of national security without gaping holes for enemies to go through. And even so, America’s enemies have found the inherent weakness that occurs during a transfer of power fertile field to attack, as it happened in the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, in the first few months of a new presidency.
The Democratic side believes that that Trump is not much concerned about anything other than his own security, worried about civil and criminal legal issues upon his departure from office. Trump again makes their case by refusing to lend Biden any credibility of victory and seems bent on undermining whatever work the new administration would have in its hands.
Biden has mostly taken a calm, laissez-faire attitude toward Trump’s sulking and Machiavellian machinations to overturn the election results in crucial states, which must certify their results by December 14 when their votes are tabulated and an official winner of the presidential election is named.
But wait, that is not all.
Those votes must then be certified by a joint session of Congress on January 6, setting up the stage for a new inauguration on January 20. Until now, after the elections, the rest of the steps have been a procedural rubber stamp. When there was a challenge due to a difference of only 537 votes, once the courts ruled on stopping the count, however, Gore conceded and the process played out as it always had.
Not so this time. The courts have been handing the Trump legal challenges to muddy up the results of the election defeat after defeat. He lost eight cases in just one day and had to drop a lawsuit in Arizona at the same time. The vote differences in those states are in the thousands and tens of thousands. Over one-hundred-thousand in Michigan, where Trump was also contesting the vote.
Trump has stopped the incoming Biden administration from accessing data on the fight against a mounting COVID-19 wave that has killed 248,707 Americans and infected 11,360, 125 others. There are new vaccine information and massive vaccine distribution plans that Trump is keeping from Biden.
The Republican side seems to have taken its congressional victories and Trump’s large popular vote as a sign that the people of America want them to be more like Trump, and so they are either supporting the Trump stalling effort or speaking more loudly with their silence. Only a handful of elected Republicans have even acknowledged Biden’s victory.
Both sides seem to be working under an assumption that Trump’s anger will subside, that he will be shown to be defeated and powerless to stop the machine of state, and the process will go on as it should.
It turns out, there is one more hole in the process of completing the determination of the winner of a presidential election. A big hole.
It is in the name of the United States General Services Administration (GSA). The process dictates that the GSA administrator issue a letter of “ascertainment” determining the likely winner of the election. The move has been a procedural recognition by the current administration that a new president has been elected and sets off a transition process. The GSA reports only to the presidential administration in power. The Trump innovation in this is that he has placed a loyal partisan in place who refuses to ascertain Biden’s victory.
Pointing to the agency’s inability to ascertain the results of the 2000 election due to ongoing court battles focusing on one state and its vote count that delayed the transition for several weeks, the agency issued statements that say, “GSA and its administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfil, all requirements under the law and adhere to the prior precedent established by the Clinton Administration in 2000.”
But the circumstances then left the result of the election really up for grabs, and the court challenge ended the bickering. Today, it does not matter how many defeats the courts hand to Trump, he just keeps pushing on with new ideas of what may permit the Supreme Court to change the election results. To that end, he is allowing no hint of an upcoming transfer of power.
The Defense Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the US Agency for International Development and other federal agencies have said they cannot engage with the Biden team until GSA acts. Again, Democrats charge that it is more out of fear of Trump than conviction. Anyone who steps out of line can be promptly fired by Trump. On Tuesday, Trump fired his cybersecurity chief for acknowledging the fairness of the elections.
Yet the GSA is the one agency that can put screeching brakes on transition efforts. It controls the money needed for a transition, and it controls access to federal offices and office space. No ascertainment. No money. No access.
It is estimated that a transition team needs some $12 million to operate, and it is estimated to operate out of offices proper for running a nation, not out of living rooms and people’s homes, pandemic or not pandemic.
“At The Government Services Agency (GSA), Four Career Republican Operatives Are Obstructing The Presidential Transition Process, Putting Our National Security At Risk,” said Accountable.US, a watchdog group self-charged with addressing “corruption and malfeasance at all levels of government and holding policymakers and special interests accountable.”
“Every day the partisan operatives running the Trump GSA dangle critical resources over President-elect Biden’s transition team is a day our national security and public health is dangerously undermined during a global pandemic,” complained Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig, according to the government business news Government Executive.
The holes in the American Constitutional Democracy are indeed dangerous to the country, its security, and existence.
It is perhaps America’s luck that the incoming president is Biden, who was vice-president until four years ago and whose 47 years in politics are a resource to help him navigate information and federal agencies, that the process is under way to this point with the outward appearance of smoothness.
That his vice-president-elect is Indian-American senator Kamala Harris, helps the process as she still a member of the body with all the access and benefits currently being denied to Biden.
