America's fatal flaw: The founders assumed our leaders would have some basic decency

America's fatal flaw: The founders assumed our leaders would have some basic decency
Our democracy was founded on optimism about human nature. Amid the Trumpian wreckage, that looks like a bad bet
David Masciotra
February 8, 2020 5:15PM (UTC)


No historian or political scientist has better explained the fragility of American democracy than a poet. When I interviewed the poet Rita Dove three years ago, she offered the following assessment of exactly how a sociopathic president like Donald Trump could inflict irreparable damage on institutions of governance, and the norms — written and unwritten — that have directed them for centuries:



Decency, in other words, was a bulwark against the corrupt impulses and wicked instincts of men in power. Even Richard Nixon, who had no compunction when persecuting citizen activists or illegally bombing Cambodia, recognized that he was a participant within an important system of laws. Eventually, he was forced to surrender to those laws. Fealty to American order has also motivated unwise and harmful behavior, such as Al Gore agreeing to accept the results of an election under suspicion of fraud for the "good of the country." The erosion of faith in American institutions and their democratic objectives, Gore and Nixon appeared to believe, would create chaos — a fracturing of the public, and a collapse of the government's ability to preserve societal stability.

Faith, like decency, is intangible. It will disappear the second that people no longer honor it or act on it. As Dove explained, decency was essential to the maintenance of the rule of law and governmental functionality in the United States. The election of the most indecent man to ever hold the office of presidency in the modern era was a warning shot across the country. After mocking a disabled reporter, routinely denigrating women and providing encouragement to his "Second Amendment people" if Hillary Clinton became president, he put decency on a gun-range target. What's even more frightening is how quickly his fellow Republicans in Congress and his supporters in the media got in line, rifles in hand, to shoot holes in it.

The recent events of Trump's acquittal in the Senate, his State of the Union address and his spiteful, rambling monologue at the White House on Thursday have collectively acted as the flatline on the heart monitor of decency. As decency dies, American life becomes ever more precarious.

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https://www.salon.com/2020/02/08/americas-fatal-flaw-the-founders-assumed-our-leaders-would-have-some-basic-decency/?fbclid=IwAR3-xIX9Ac4MBCvCBa3xR4xzFQg4CbHlGOS-ljhyEFTl-_4J4uiWi5wz7LQ