The current political reality is such a nightmare it shouldn’t surprise anyone that some individuals — me included — are attempting to construct a new reality, one that will bring about an end to the anger, hurt and pain we’re currently experiencing; in other words, something that will remove the huge stone from our collective shoe. We just want to wake up from the hellish dream.
So excuse me if I seem to strain the bounds of credulity as I attempt to construct a scenario that depicts what I hope will be the outcome of this latest chapter in our ongoing experiment in democracy. Desperate times call for desperate thoughts.
If the Constitution on which our Republic was founded is still as strong as our Founding Fathers intended for that document to be — and indeed it was strong enough to see us through the cataclysm of a great and destructive Civil War — what I’m about to posit should be the logical outcome of this current fiasco. Or at least I hope so.
While our Constitution has to be elastic enough to accommodate changes over the years — such as new ways of making war, airplanes (let alone space flight) and the Internet — it also has to be inelastic enough to not kowtow to the whims of crackpots, charlatans and tinhorn would-be dictators, no matter the wave of populism on which they rode into office. That’s why we have a system of checks and balances.
The first test of that system is going to occur when the intelligence community issues its report that finds Russia had a hand in tampering with our electoral process. Trump will be dismissive of the report but senators from both parties — realizing that full faith and confidence has to be maintained in the dozen or so agencies that are entrusted with the duty of keeping the country safe, free from outside influence, and enemies foreign and domestic — will have little choice but to try to clip the new president’s wings before he gets too full of himself. Perhaps the incoming commander-in-chief needs to be reminded that most of his agenda, including nominations to the Supreme Court, can be thwarted since Republicans don’t have a 60-vote majority in the Senate.
This initial confrontation could, in all likelihood, set the tone for future relations between the executive and legislative branches, and unless I miss my guess, President Trump is going to try to run roughshod over the Senate from day one. Now, if the senators (who, by they way, are elected by the people too) allow this, then as a nation, we’re fucked. We might as well get prepared to become a Russian satellite state.
However, if my gut instincts are correct I’m assuming that Trump won’t know how to back down or compromise since he’s never had to. Further, if Congress is up to carrying out its duty, a constitutional crisis will be precipitated within a year, two at most. When that happen, our elected officials will have to choose: Either risk the ruination of the Republic at the hands of a megalomaniac, or discharge their duties, no matter how their constituents back home might feel about it. The Constitution requires no less.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Peering Into My Crystal Ball”
Alan Barnhart
Well-said, Mansfield. Especially disconcerting is recent news of alleged Russian malware on a Vermont utility’s computer, Let us hope that representatives with integrity uphold the basic principles this country once stood for. Best wishes for 2017.