An astounding 83 percent of Americans believe our country’s democracy is under threat. President Biden keeps reminding us that former President Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Trump says the same thing about Biden. And, in a recent poll, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans says that “democracy is in danger of collapse.”
But a different story emerges on the ground. American elections are being held properly and on time, participation rates are high and our state and federal administrations are stable and functioning exactly as the Constitution prescribes. All local government bodies — about 80,000 of them, from city councils to boards of education — and all 50 state governments are performing their designated duties and remain accountable to “We the People.”
If the recent elections in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky tell us anything, it’s that American democracy is highly responsive. The Democrats won big — even though Biden’s approval rating is down near 40 percent — mostly because a pro-abortion rights agenda is what the people want.
At the federal level, where most of this alarming talk is focused, our three coequal branches are functioning much as they have for 235 years. Congress passed five consequential laws last year, most with bipartisan support: it acted on climate change, reformed presidential elections, tightened gun laws, strengthened U.S. manufacturing against China, and enshrined same-sex marriage nationally. This year, the GOP-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate and presidency are duking it out as they always have under our unique system of divided government. And the Supreme Court continues to issue far-reaching decisions, most recently on affirmative action, state rights and executive overreach.
As for Donald Trump, the American system’s built-in safeguards dealt with him quite effectively. His wings were clipped within two years of taking office when Democrats regained the House majority in the 2018 midterms. In his last two years in office, Trump was crippled by investigations and two impeachments. And his post-presidency so far includes indictments on 91 charges across four criminal cases, 47 state and 44 federal.
Trump’s attempts to overreach or act unilaterally were stopped by our renowned system of checks and balances. His ban on immigration from some Muslim countries, for example, and his policy to separate children from their undocumented immigrant parents were both stopped by the courts. His attempt to build a wall on the southern border was curtailed by Congress.
Even the authors of the best-selling book “How Democracies Die” acknowledged that, in his first year, “President Trump repeatedly scraped up against the guardrails, like a reckless driver, but he did not break through them. We did not cross the line into authoritarianism.”
But still the scaremongers warn about democracy’s impending demise. Their ongoing narrative is about Trump’s “Big Lie” (that Biden’s victory was illegitimate) and his incitement of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. But Trump failed at these shenanigans too, thanks again to our system’s built-in restraints. Nearly all state and federal elected officials — including many Republicans and his own vice president — remained true to their constitutional oaths and refused to enable his attempts to stay in office.
These prophets of doom continue to badmouth American democracy, however, because it gives them a partisan advantage. Trump has given the Democrats plenty of fodder to keep up the portrayal of him and his party as a danger to the nation, thus creating a lucrative ecosystem for left-leaning politicians, writers and activist groups to sell themselves and their ideas.
But this only serves to increase polarization and weaken faith in our own democracy — not to mention strengthening the hands of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and their ilk. Research suggests that Americans are more willing to act undemocratically when they fear the opposing party is doing the same. As Jason Willick argued in a recent Washington Post column, “The threat to American democracy arises, at least in part, from bad information: People overestimate the threat to democracy from the other tribe and are more willing to defensively subvert democratic norms as a result.”
Democracy in America is in no danger as long as we retain our Founders’ constitutional structure, which ingeniously restricts the consolidation of powers. The federal system, the separation of executive and legislative powers, and the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review are critical keys to this country’s success over the past two centuries.
“Every tinhorn dictator in the world today has a bill of rights,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in a 2014 interview. “It isn’t a bill of rights that produces freedom. It’s the structure of government that prevents anybody from seizing all the power.”
“Keep your eye on the ball,” Scalia advised. “Structure is destiny.”
America must avoid any constitutional reform that changes what Thomas Jefferson called “the beautiful equilibrium” of powers. Some of our system’s features are often attacked as being “undemocratic”: the Electoral College, the Senate’s equal vote to all states and the filibuster rule, to name three. But abolishing them would end up consolidating more power in fewer hands.
Keep the faith, America. Our democracy is doing just fine.
Bhanu Dhamija is a newspaper publisher and the author of “Why India Needs the Presidential System.”