![]() Democrats brought Supreme Court nominations to the public, in 1987, running television ads against Reagan nominee Robert Bork. Beginning in 1981 with Ronald Reagan’s presidency, members of Congress have introduced impeachment resolutions against every single president. After Watergate, the parties pursued what the political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg has called “politics by other means” - the politics not of elections but of investigations and indictments of members of Congress and other elected officials, including the president. But the appetite for vengeance is a symptom of the same poison. Given the scale of the administration’s mendacity and cruelty, taking back the White House, if that happens, doesn’t seem like quite enough of a victory. Many Trump critics will find this suggestion maddeningly insufficient. If anyone has a better suggestion than truth and reconciliation, have at it.” That better suggestion is the ordinary working of justice, the strengthening of democratic institutions and the writing of history, over time, through the study of carefully preserved records. “Americans must, at some point, decide on which truths we still find self-evident. “To return to something that resembles a functioning and participatory democracy, the country needs a period of internal reflection and public cleansing,” the American historian Kevin Baker wrote in the New Republic two years ago. Even though the argument about what it means and what should happen will be bitter, and the divisions in America will not be eased, at least there will be a shared narrative and facts.’ ” This is a fantasy. Perry, a scholar of medieval history, told Salon. “The result should be that we as a country can say, ‘Here’s the truth,’ ” David M. Much of the left does not.Ĭhris Hayes isn’t the only commentator calling for a truth tribunal. In his recent House Divided speech at Gettysburg, Biden - no Lincoln - said, “We are facing too many crises, we have too much work to do, we have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division.” In the trade-off between prosecution and stability, Biden chooses stability. Biden, emphasizing the independence of the Justice Department, has stated that he would neither question its judgment nor interfere with its actions should it decide to pursue charges. ![]() good for democracy.” New administrations in failed or failing democracies, places like Argentina and the Philippines, routinely bring criminal charges against opponents, but this has not been the practice in the United States, going back to the rejection of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Biden has said such prosecutions would be a “very unusual thing and probably not very. If Joe Biden is inaugurated in January, the Justice Department might decide to pursue charges against Trump officials. Stopping the destruction of records is where the real fight lies. This year, the Department of Homeland Security requested the destruction of “records developed to track and monitor complaints that are or will be investigated by DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties regarding alleged violations of civil rights and civil liberties.” The American Historical Association has protested the destruction of these and other records, joining two lawsuits against the administration. He has also ignored warnings from the National Archives and Records Administration as early as 2017. Trump routinely tears up notes, papers and other documents - aides call this his “ filing system” - in violation of the Presidential Records Act (historians’ actions against the administration on this score have so far been unsuccessful). There is every reason to fear that the administration will destroy the evidence of its malfeasance and incompetence, especially its abuses of human rights, its violations of the Constitution and its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In the aftermath of the Trump administration, whenever it ends, the need for a full and accurate historical record will be especially great. That archival justification for such a commission is worth pondering.
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