Law, Power, and Justice

After Trump’s indictments, can America protect the peaceful transfer of power?
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-indictments-political-warfare-comes-home

Excerpts:

World history overflows with examples of rulers who refused to relinquish power when they lost the mandate of the people. Many Americans and foreign admirers of the United States, however, assumed that the country was somehow immune from a problem that many associated instead with the developing world.

The charges against Trump raise questions not only about the line between the politically ruthless and the criminal in a democracy but also about the very ability of the judiciary, along with state and local officials, to enforce the will of the electorate against the immense power of the American presidency.

What Trump and his co-conspirators undertook was nothing less than a form of political warfare, traditionally associated with covert operations. Since World War II, American presidents have relied on these tactics to manipulate some democratic contests abroad, as Harry Truman did in Italy in 1948, for example, and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson did in advance of 1964 elections in British Guiana and Chile.

Trump’s successive schemes to stay in office did not fail because the president lost heart or changed his mind. They failed because federal officials and state leaders outside the conspiracy stopped them