Getting Back To Normal

At the end of Michael Cohen’s testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee, Chairman Elijah Cummings made a stirring and impassioned plea for a return to normalcy. Cummings addressed Cohen, saying, “As I sat here and listened to both sides, I just felt as if – you know, people are using my words that they took from me and didn’t give me any credit –  we’re better than this. We are so much – we really are – as a country we are so much better than this…I don’t know why this is happening for you but it is my hope is that a small part of it is for our country to be better. If I hear you correctly, it sounds like you are crying out for a new normal, for us getting back to normal. It sounds to me like you want to make sure our democracy stays intact. The one meeting I had with Mr. Trump, I said to him the greatest gift that you and I, Mr. President, can give to our children is making sure that we give them a democracy that is still intact, a democracy better than the one we came upon. And I’m hoping that the things you’ve said today will help us, then, to get back there…And so, the President called you a rat. We’re better than that, we really are. And I’m hoping that all of us can get back to this democracy we want, and should be passing on to our children so they can do better than what we did…And hopefully this portion of your destiny will lead to a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America, and a better world. And I mean that from the depths of my heart. When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure that we kept our democracy intact. Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? Did we play games?…C’mon now, we can do more than one thing. And we have got to get back to normal.”

Cummings’ cri-de-coeur certainly will resonate with many in this country. And he certainly did his part to return to normalcy as the adult in the room who prevented the hearing from devolving into the total media circus it had originally threatened to be. He was strict and firm in keeping the questioning moving along yet patient and respectful in deescalating the row over racism prompted by Mark Meadows’ age old “some of his best friends are black” defense of Trump and then himself.

There has never been anything “normal” about race relations in the US. But the tiff between Tlaib and Meadows shows that this younger generation of newly empowered minorities will not only no longer tolerate the previously accepted bigotry of older white men but will hold them accountable and openly call it out for what it is.

But other parts of the hearing illustrated just how difficult it will be to get back to the normalcy that Cummings yearns for. How can there be when the two sides live in different universes. Cohen described the President as overseeing a vast racketeering enterprise engaged in tax fraud, bank fraud, accounting fraud, campaign finance crimes, and obstruction of justice. When the Republicans on the committee weren’t attacking Cohen’s credibility, which was most of the time, Jim Jordan and others were outlining a vast conspiracy to unseat the President that included Jim Comey, Andy McCabe, Hillary Clinton, Peter Strzok, Rod Rosenstein, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis, Tom Steyer, and even Cummings himself, and of which Cohen was now a part.

Elsewhere, the former governor of Wisconsin is telling conservatives that babies are being taken from hospitals and murdered. A former White House official labels progressives as communists and claims “They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved.” It’s hard to see how to reconcile these different world views into a new normal.

Getting back to normal will require a reconciliation of more than just those two points of view. It will require accountability that has, for far too long, been lacking. That lack of accountability is reflected in Obama’s decision to “turn the page” and whitewash the torture that occurred under the Bush administration. Similarly, it is illustrated by the DOJ’s decision to not prosecute a single Wall Street executive in the wake of the massive fraud that caused the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, It is a credible argument that Trump was only able to run for President because he had avoided being held to account for decades of criminal activity.

Tlaib’s rebuke of Meadows is just an infinitesimal step toward that necessary accountability. Cummings hearing was an even more important beginning to that process but which still has a long way to go. Elizabeth Warren’s pledge that, if President, “there will be no pardons for anyone implicated in these investigations” is another positive step, but ensures nothing unless she actually wins, which is hardly a surety, but which should be adopted by whomever the Democratic nominee eventually is. The Cohen hearing will be one of many that will shine a light on the broad range of corruption that exists throughout the Trump administration that needs to be exposed and actually punished, regardless of how the Russian collusion investigation ends.

But even beyond finally demanding accountability, how do we get back to normal when so many of the norms have been broken beyond repair. What’s the incentive for any presidential candidate to release their taxes without being forced to by law? Why should minority rights be protected by the filibuster when the process has been so thoroughly abused as to render the Senate totally dysfunctional except for votes requiring a simple majority, and forcing the majority to extend that exception to more and more types of legislation and confirmations? Why shouldn’t one party pack the Supreme Court when the other refuses to even give a hearing to a well qualified nominee simply because he was nominated by the President from another party and would shift the ideological balance of the court? For that matter, why shouldn’t the lower courts also be packed in response to the abuse of the blue slip policy and then discarding that policy strictly for partisan advantage?

How do we get back to normal when partisan legislatures strip power away from the elected governor of another party? How do we get back to normal when legislatures can create partisan gerrymanders that establish near permanent majority status and overturn ballot measures that expressed the direct will of the people? How do we get back to normal when we rely on electoral structures devised nearly a quarter of a millennium ago that have clearly become an obstacle to the inherent fairness of the democratic principle of one man, one vote and when the Supreme Court, the ultimate interpreter of our laws, prefers to read our founding document literally rather than making its core principles live in the present?

Finally, how can we have a better democracy when foreign governments can continually interfere in our politics and elections through social media and dark money contributions? How can we have a better democracy when the President runs the government in the same way he ran the criminal enterprise that is his business? How can we have a better democracy when the President abuses the concept of national security to impose tariffs, build a vanity wall against the expressed wishes of Congress, and provide his family with security clearances the intelligence community had denied? How can we have a better democracy when there is a very real possibility the President is acting as an agent of a foreign power?

Cummings has at least made a start in answering these questions. As Charlie Pierce writes, the Cohen hearing was “[a] reassertion of democratic forms and norms, institutions and prerogatives, and a reassertion that took place despite the best effort of the House minority to tamp it down. That was what the day was about. That is what the next election is going to be about. That’s what the next five years are going to be about. The Second Reconstruction is underway”. I fear that it will take more than five years to bring us to the normal that Cummings cried out for.  And, lest we forget, the Reconstruction Era was filled with violence and ended in abject failure for the former slaves it was designed to empower. It will take an enormous effort and a substantial revision to the status quo in order to produce a lasting reconstruction of our democracy. At least that process has finally begun.