In a “normal” presidential election, it’s understandable for the nation to be fixed on unpacking respective policy positions.
But this is not a normal election.
To be sure, the recent presidential debate offered plenty of insights: Republican nominee Donald Trump muddled through ambiguities (“concept of a plan”) and feigned distance from Project 2025, while Democratic nominee Kamala Harris spoke intelligently about general positions.
Still, policies are secondary in this election. The primary question is “will you uphold the Constitution?”
For his part, Mr. Trump made clear his disdain for American democracy when he tried to overturn the fair and legitimate presidential election of 2020, culminating in the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump’s unpatriotic provocations on Jan. 6 and their grave consequences must remain front and center. Journalists need to stay on Trump for the assault of 140 police officers, death of three Capitol officers and monetary losses totaling $2.7 million. The former president needs to explain to America why he watched the violent chaos on TV for 187 minutes before releasing a video message that, while presumably calling for a halt to the violence, also praised the insurrectionists.
It’s not hyperbole: Harris’s opponent instigated one of the most infamous days in United States history, joining the tragic trifecta of Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers. Indeed, it’s the main reason 154 political scientists recently ranked Trump dead last, as the worst president ever.
Predictably, Trump is working overtime to normalize his offenses. He’s doubled down with more lies to the American people, all the while wrapping himself in the flag and talking about saving a country whose core values he clearly does not respect.
Like all presidents before him, Trump swore to uphold the Constitution and honor the principles that have made America great since 1776: liberty, the rule of law and self-government, including the peaceful transfer of power — those values we honor every time we vote or stand for the national anthem. He did not do it.
The contrast with the president perennially ranked as the greatest, Abraham Lincoln, is instructive. Decades before the Civil War, a young Lincoln reminded Americans “never to violate … the laws of the country; and never tolerate their violation by others.” He updated that message in 1859, saying “the people” must never overthrow the Constitution, but instead “overthrow the men who pervert it.”
The former president’s perversion of the Constitution becomes particularly insufferable given the unpatriotic disdain he has shown to individuals who sacrificed their lives defending America’s core values, as was shockingly displayed when he called veterans who died in World War I “losers” and “suckers.” And most recently with his disgraceful campaign photo op at Arlington National Cemetery.
The offenses pile up. And so do the rationalizations by “respectable” Republicans who downplay such unpatriotic behavior or default to policymaking. “When I look at the policies,” said Nikki Haley, “that’s where I go back and I look at the differences.”
This is a cowardly cop out. Claims of policy over principle only serve to normalize a man and a movement that Ms. Haley must know to be abnormal and un-American. After all, she repeatedly said as much in her primary run. What folks like Haley, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr and Chris Sununu fail to realize is that cowardice can never be redeemed.
Moreover, the country misses an opportunity to engage directly with the meaning of patriotism and public virtue. As Liz Cheney incisively stated, Republicans can survive four years of policies they don’t like or agree with, but the nation “can’t survive a president who is willing to torch the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s proclivity for constitutional pyromania continues unabated. As he recently told supporters, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” Only to be followed by a pledge to “arrest opponents.”
Such comments make clear why policy debates in this year’s presidential election are secondary, and why there’s no real choice in 2024.
If we heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, political forces like Trumpism that run counter to America’s founding principles are doomed to end up on the ash heap of history. Still, it is imperative we come together in November to expedite and ensure its political demise.
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John Gripentrog, Ph.D., is a scholar of U.S. history and lives in Mars Hill.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Trump failed to uphold US Constitution during Jan. 6 violence
