The last three American presidents have encountered serous challenges to their legitimacy.
George W. Bush was elected in 2000 after Bush v. Gore (531 U.S. 98), split along partisan lines, halted recount of Florida's challenged ballots. Democratic candidate Al Gore won a majority of the national popular vote but lost the Electoral College. Many supporters felt that had the recount continued Gore would have won Florida's electoral votes and become president and that Bush had stolen the election.
The legitimacy of Bush's successor was also challenged, by "birthers" arguing that Barack Obama was not an American citizen. This may have appealed to racists upset that a man identifying as black (though actually biracial, a "mutt" as Obama himself put it once) had won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College. The birthers conveniently overlooked the fact that since Obama's mother was an American, he would have been a citizen even if born in Antarctica or Argentina rather than in Hawaii.
And now Obama's successor is also under attack as illegitimate by virtue of alleged Republican ethnic cleansing of registered voters and of Russian dissemination of maliciously selected documents stolen from Democratic Party computers. Some Obama supporters may consider this to be poetic justice, since Donald Trump helped put Obama's birthers on the map.
How many Americans recognize what a profound change has taken place since 1960?
The Nixon-Kennedy race was extremely close. If Nixon had won Illinois he would have been elected. There were reasons to suspect that Kennedy's people had stolen the Illinois election, but Nixon didn't challenge the outcome, at least not openly. That was not how the game was played.
The recent developments are alarming. Democracy is impossible without a general willingness to accept election results no matter how distasteful the outcome. We used to contrast our elections with those in Latin America, where losers often proclaimed that "we were robbed!" and invited the military to overthrow the elected president. At least we haven't gone that far. Yet.
Of course the more "American" way would be to egg the courts into declaring the election invalid, as has happened recently elsewhere. But if successful, such a maneuver would just substitute a judicial dictatorship for an imperfect democracy.
Elections, of course, being human activities, can be conducted less than perfectly. They are subject to manipulation, skulduggery, and intentional or inadvertent miscounts. But if we were to demand perfection, we would be unable to select leaders through elections.
We do need to establish the strongest possible protections against electoral malpractice. This will include scrapping voting machines that don't provide a paper trail to assure that challenged votes were counted properly. Machines must also be well protected from hacking. And we must guarantee that every adult citizen — including those who are in prison or used to be — can vote, so there can be no claims that our rulers are selecting the electorate rather than vice versa. Registration must be straightforward, convenient, and independent of economic status. If voter identification is required, citizens should be able to acquire it conveniently — at no cost.
It would also be good if something can be done about gerrymandering.
TV commentator Eric Sevareid once said that being president is like "treading water while swatting bees." It does not help presidents focus on wise decisions if they have to spend time swatting away people with bees in their bonnets who are contesting their legitimacy.
By any reasonable standard Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were legitimate. As for Donald Trump, it is possible that voters influenced by Russian manipulation might have tipped the election in his favor. But even if this was the case, and even if Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians, it would not make his election illegitimate.
In a democracy, there must be one absolute rule: One cannot challenge the reasons people voted one way or the other. For example, racial discrimination is despicable, and in some contexts illegal, but few would argue that an election outcome is illegitimate because some people voted for or against a candidate because of that candidate’s race.
Any other rule could render all elections subject to challenge. No matter how bad we consider the outcome of any particular election, it would be far worse if we were to make it impossible to elect top officials.
It is time to lay off claims that Donald Trump's White House occupancy is illegitimate. They are deflecting public attention from more important matters, We need to judge him by his behavior. If this is found wanting, orderly procedures — impeachment, and the 25th Amendment — are available.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published 1981 and his most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and a number of other states. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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