A Great American Triumph Finally Lies Within Our Reach: Executive Accountability

"Politicians are not born; they are excreted." -Cicero

The course of American history has seen many individuals become president - whether by election or ascension–across nearly 250 years. 45 different ones across 46 different administrations. There have been presidents who have succeeded in great and remarkable ways, and there are those who have failed to either energize and invigorate the nation with their vision and agenda for progress, as well as some who had really no vision of progress for the society or nation at all - at least in particular ways of course. 

The office of president has evolved to be a strange position of enormous power and consequence - both for the people of the nation itself, as well as for many of those across the entire planet. As was noted some six decades ago by former head of CBS Fred W. Friendly concerning the American presidency, "No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand." It remains as true a statement today as when it was first made, yet the “credibility gap” that emerged shortly thereafter between the president and the American people has endured steadily in the decades since, and has taken and kept with it, trust and confidence in other democratic institutions. 

That is not to say that democracy is not capable of fighting back; as a recent VOX piece summed up quite well, 2022 was a good year for democratic institutions around the world in many ways. With that noted, however, American democracy could do with an innovation nearly two and a half centuries in the making; an American President must be held accountable for their misdeeds while in office.

This is not to say either that presidents should be punished perennially; the unfortunate proclivity of partisan forces to utilize parliamentary or legal procedures against one another for political purposes–just as they do with the most available weapons during a physical conflict–must be considered and understood in the context concerning why presidential punishment hardly exists in any relative sense. 

President Andrew Jackson was censured by the Senate in 1834 for behaving with reckless abandon, only for the Senate to make it a point to go back into the log to strike the censure from the pages of history in his defense by 1837. 

A bit more than three decades later, after the slavepowers revolt was suppressed and Lincoln assassinated by disparate actors of white supremacy, Andrew Johnson did all in his own power as chief executive to protect those defeated states and their peoples from the change of which they each so desperately required. He narrowly avoided being found guilty in the Senate by a singular vote, and by doing so, unknowingly created a precedent that would be followed over the decades since.

Johnson, however, allowed for the metaphorical iron to cool enough that it would not be molded as properly in the aftermath of the American Civil War as it ought to have been. As American Reconstruction had been endeavored upon for some twelve years after the Civil War and was winding down, those former slaveowners–now merely white supremacists without any human chattel–were gaining ground in their race to dominate society as they once did prior to the administration of Abraham Lincoln. 

Reconstruction’s end in 1877 with the remarkably corrupt and undemocratic Compromise of 1877 fully flung the door wide open for many of the former actors of that revolt to reclaim seats they once held in Congress once again. From there, America has continued its battle against the white supremacist strain that was not properly extinguished from the political and social body during and after that great civil, economic and moral conflict.

But–returning to the topic of discussion–recent American history too has had those presidents who act poorly, and, like their 19th-century predecessors, have skirted any real accountability other than resigning–in the case of Nixon–or being voted out, because of some misguided and misbegotten sense of national self-importance and misperception.

The handling of Richard Nixon and Watergate is of paramount importance in this conversation, but so too must we consider additional Presidential administrations–those who went through impeachment proceedings and those who did not. Watergate, coming on the heels of the conflict that LBJ inherited from Dwight Eisenhower and John F Kennedy and grew into a full-blown catastrophe–which created the famous and still present “credibility gap”–was another blow to the image of not only the president, but of executive accountability as well.

While LBJ and his administration had simply continued policies begun by the prior two administrations, his flagrant lying and the noticeable escalation of the conflict–alongside the draft–created a real, tangible rift between what was stated by the White House and what was believed by the public. 

Johnson would not seek a second elected term in office in 1968 for a number of reasons, of which the hit to his public image and his immense fear of being perceived by people as a loser undoubtedly contributed to–and while many Americans chided Johnson as a human rights criminal, his successor would up the ante. 

Richard Nixon waged secret bombing campaigns all across southeast Asia, from Vietnam–a declared target of bombings–to Cambodia and Laos–two undeclared targets. Yet despite this, the former Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower would ultimately fall from his perch as the commander-in-chief of the United States due not to ultra-violence at home or abroad, but due to the now-infamous Watergate scandal–which involved secret slush funds, presidentially authorized criminality, and of course, the break-in that began the entire investigation at the Watergate hotel in downtown Washington DC.

Discussion concerning credibility, mixed with the great public outcry became so intense at this time, in fact, that it has been famously noted that Nixon finally resigned when Senator and former 1964 Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater of Arizona notified him in 1974 that he would not be able to maintain his position as president and would be successfully impeached were he to not resign. 

He, therefore, resigned–allegedly in the hopes of sparing the country the international shame and domestic tensions that such a tremendous impeachment trial might create–was pardoned by his successor, his former Vice President and the one-time Republican Speaker of the House, Gerald Ford, and was, coincidentally–for him at least–spared the humiliation of being held accountable for having authorized and committed crimes from the highest, most powerful office in the country–nigh, the world. Sparing Nixon his humiliation, however, left the nation to bear it instead.

While the 19th century left a long leash for a President with how leaders like Jackson, Tyler, Buchannon, Johnson, and many bonafide Confederates were handled, and certainly created or backed previous precedents of laxity regarding the Chief Executive of the United States, the handling of Nixon and Watergate essentially created the modern precedent that the American President might even commit grossly illegal acts from their position without necessarily being held to account for doing so. 

With this better understood, is it any wonder that the successive decades would see real scandals plague nearly each Presidential administration? The Reagan administration would feature issues concerning HUD, Iran-Contra, as well as American support for Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, in which he was aided by that administration in using chemical weapons against Iranian targets and positions, as well as–somehow–many others. His successor and former-vice president was hardly better either—neither Reagan or Bush would be censured, let alone impeached.

William Jefferson Clinton would have Whitewater, which would spiral into an impeachment trial surrounding the President’s despicable sexual coercion and domination of a young staffer, Monica Lewinski, in the Oval Office. Even so, he would survive impeachment for everything and leave the public spotlight following the Presidential Election of 2000; Mr. Clinton would not have made it through his entire presidency had he taken office two decades later, it does not take much consideration to imagine. 

His successor, George W Bush, a man who, like LBJ before him, lied his way into sending young people to be maimed and harmed in a conflict that is only not a war thanks to procedural technicalities, would, like Johnson, never face charges or congressional inquiries concerning why so many were sacrificed in largely unnecessary military exercises across the world. His litany of scandals would have seemed–prior to the era of Donald Trump–a low point that modern America would struggle to reach in the near future.

As Noam Chomsky is famous for having noted, as part of a larger speech given in 1990, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” While this is largely a reasonable statement based on the historical actions that were punished at the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo and those actions subsequently–at one time or another–committed by the 15 (if one includes Truman) presidents to have had a term in office since the Second World War ended, actually, American leaders would not be the only individuals hanging at the gallows were all crimes judged to these standards; French, English, Russian, Chinese leaders, and others very well, in this instance, would have also likely joined their American counterparts. 

But they were not, and are not. The international community does not often have the collective ability–or desire–to force barbarous leaders from their positions of leadership by traditional, physical force, any more than through international diplomacy or economic measures. Were they able to, one might imagine that the 45th American Presidential administration might have found themselves in some international trouble.

They are not able to, however. Donald J Trump, the disgraced 45th President of the United States–guilty of so many acts of barbarism, callousness, carelessness and immorality, on top of the attempted usurpation of the peoples’ will by illegal, unconstitutional means–might have actually and finally, after a failed four-year term as president, benefited his nation in a real, positive and necessary manner.

While a Congress that was fraught with partisan excuse-making in two prior instances where the 45th President acted improperly and was taken to task for it by the House–for trying to blackmail with security funds the current Ukrainian Prime Minister into investigating Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential Election, and then for instigating and inciting the violent attacks of 6 January 2021–Donald Trump has positioned himself by his collective actions and behavior to become the first American President to actually be held accountable for actions while in office.

Congress failed over four years, but the Department of Justice and individual states can redeem congress in some still significant manner. This executive punishment–far from being a blemish upon the nation’s history–would be a great and marvelous innovation that we as a nation have been unwarrantedly trying to avoid for decades, and even centuries. 

It will be, when and if it finally happens by the suggestion of Justice Department officials and Special Counselor Jack Smith, an indication that, even when America appears to be at odds with itself, it can hold its own leaders accountable to the standards of behavior it so often advocates for across its own lands and across the greater world itself. 

Nations like France, South Korea, and many others carry out investigations on leaders whether they are in or out of office, and if they are found to have violated the terms of their office or its power–whether leading or after retirement–face legal consequences the same as any other citizen of their society.

And so it should be. It is a remarkably naive facade, holding none of your leaders to account because of the prospect that someone somewhere might say that many of them commit ostensible wrongs while in office. 

Indeed, the rest of the world does not think that American presidents have not done unfortunate things inside and outside of their borders, simply because none of them have ever been held accountable by Congress or the Justice Department for wrongdoing; they see the wrongdoings, at home and abroad, and they hear those words of which so many of our leaders preach concerning unity and a liberal society and world, and they chortle at the thought of the audacious hypocrisy being expounded. 

When Donald J Trump is finally brought up upon criminal charges related to any of the bevy of fraudulent and treasonous activities he has participated in, it will be the clearest sign yet of the ability of the United States of America to govern, regulate, and fix itself, no matter the obstacles. The nation has not always succeeded in doing so, as has been noted, but the next great precedent, the one that will positively affect the future by impressing a sense of fair and equal justice for all, is the most important of them all.

While America has done so many positive and noteworthy things over the two and a half centuries, one of the truly most significant blemishes that exist is precisely that the nation has never successfully defended itself from the tyranny of the ever-expanding Presidential power and its varied, historical abuses. 

This time, however, there will be accountability, and from then on, it will be understood that no President–regardless of party or political position–can or ever will become greater than the nation which empowers that individual to positively lead them forward in the first instance. A great American triumph finally lies within our reach, and its name is executive accountability.