Commentary, Swedish Radio, August 6, 2023.

DEMOCRATIC SUICIDE

It is quite possible, and right now most likely, that the Republican Party's candidate in the US presidential election next year will be Donald Trump. This is despite the fact that he will be facing multiple charges for serious federal crimes with a combined maximum sentence of over six hundred years. This week he was indicted for his role in the attack on the US Congress building on 6 January 2021. Conspiracy to defraud the United States is one of the charges.

This is a person who has made no secret of what he intends to do with presidential power if he gets it again, such as overriding the US Constitution if it happens to stand in the way of his exercise of power. He has also said that the Constitution gives the President the power to do whatever he wants, which is not true, but not entirely out of the blue either. The powers that Article 2 of the Constitution places in the hands of the President are very broad, such as the power to pardon anyone for any crime, including close family and friends. Even himself if necessary.

He also has the power to appoint and dismiss ministers and officials in US federal departments and agencies, as well as the power as Commander in Chief, which has been interpreted as the power to decide if and when to use nuclear weapons.

The strong presidential power was a creation of the American founding fathers, who were afraid of internal disintegration and war, but they also believed that they had created a system of government where the strong presidential power would be balanced by a legislative power independent of the president, the Congress, and an interpretive power independent of the president, the Supreme Court.

What they could not foresee, or even imagine, was that a president could use his power to short-circuit the separation of powers and make himself king, which is what Donald Trump is now accused of trying to do.

This was because they could not imagine that a person like Donald Trump could be elected president. Still less could they imagine that the same person could be elected president a second time to complete his work of destruction.

How this happened is a story in itself, but it shows that no constitution, however cleverly constructed, can protect democracy from committing suicide.

A democracy commits suicide when it legitimately elects a leader who wants to abolish democracy, which is what Donald Trump has more or less openly said he wants to do. For example, by abolishing the laws and regulations that in 2020 prevented him from winning the presidential election he had lost in a legally democratic manner. If this Trump becomes the Republican Party's presidential candidate again, the US will probably have seen its last peaceful and democratic transition of power, regardless of who wins or loses, as too many people will fight over the outcome of the election - whatever it is.

A democracy that cannot carry out a peaceful and democratic transition of power cannot remain a democracy.

Nor can a democracy where the demos, the people, distrust the institutions and procedures of democracy.

Democracy presupposes a demos that can stand up to a demagogue, a seducer of the people who seeks the support of the people with fine words and false promises in order to take power into his own hands. Not necessarily by formally abolishing democracy - there is no need for that nowadays - but by formally attacking the foundations of democracy.

This is what we have seen happening in countries such as Hungary, Poland and Türkiye, and what we are now seeing happening in Israel, and what may very soon be happening in the United States, where millions of Americans seem prepared, for the time being, to put power in the hands of a person who has demonstrated in word and deed his contempt for the foundations and principles of democracy.

Democracy dies in darkness, is the slogan of Washington Post.

Democracy can also die in broad daylight, and by its own hand, I might add.