Some Thoughts on the Republican Donald Trump, and All the Other Republicans, Mormon or Otherwise, I Know (and Sometimes Love)

[Note: this is a long and very party-centric set of musings for the day before the presidential election ends and the real electoral and legal chaos begins. For many, that’s a turnoff. But I’m both a scholar of American politics as well as a politics nerd, so that’s what you get. Read on, if you feel so inclined. And yes, this an expansion/revision of a piece published by Insight Kansas, in The Wichita Eagle and elsewhere, over a week ago. Cross-posted to By Common Consent.]

For a great many people—though not, I think, quite as many as some people suppose—in America over the past eight years or so, the problem of Donald Trump and the Republican party is entirely straightforward. Trump is an awful person, who represents awful things—as my fellow Kansas writer Joel Mathis summarized it on Saturday, his whole approach to representative politics has always involved divisiveness, cruelty, and threats of (and sometimes actual) violence--and so anyone who supports him, and any party he is part of, must be, by definition, awful, full stop.

Both personally and professionally, I have a hard time imagining how anyone with a lick of political sense could fail to recognize how potentially counter-productive doubling-down on that attitude is—to say nothing of how arguably un-Christian it is for those of us who take the command to love one’s enemies seriously, and who therefore should be very conscious of the costs to our ability to draw a line between our opinions and electoral divisiveness, cruelty, and possible violence, when it comes to labeling any other human being or group of human beings by definition “awful” (or “evil,” or “garbage,” or “scum,” or "demonic," or “deplorable,” or whatever you prefer). I’m not denying that it’s hard to avoid that doubling-down; civil discourse, maintaining a full-throated defense of one’s beliefs while showing love and respect to others, is really hard when basic civic norms seem to have collapsed. But still, I think that is what both democratic citizenship and Christian discipleship call on us to do. The fact that many smart and good people I know, who appear to me in all other areas of their lives to sincerely affirm both of those aforementioned principles, apparently do in fact double-down on all-or-nothing anger nonetheless, just shows that it’s my imagination that’s lacking. 

Do I think Trump is an awful human being? Yes, absolutely; my opinion of him—“personally corrupt, administratively irresponsible, stupidly (and often gleefully) divisive, and politically destructive”—hasn’t changed in the past four years. Do I think that everyone that supports Trump is therefore also awful? No, because “supports” is a broad term, one which technically includes everyone from Stephen Miller, a convicted felon and an unrepentant racist immigrant-basher, and my mother, a wonderful 79-year-old woman whom I love dearly. I mean, they both voted for Trump, so QED, right?

There is a cohort of the politically awoke and online—though again, I am convinced, by both the data on split-ticket voting and personal observation, that the polarizing “Big Sort” of American voters into two rival tribes hasn’t eliminated cross-party familial and social relations nearly to the extent some believe—who might well insist that, whatever the manifold differences between my mom and Stephen Miller, in the present environment they belong in the same category. I can understand that formulation, in the same way I can understand—and even defend as coherent—that formulating of political opinions which leads people to become single-issue voters: that literally nothing else matters except where a candidate stands on stopping abortion, or where a candidate stands on ending the war in Gaza, etc. But however coherent it may be to conclude that if X is awful—a fascist, perhaps, or even, in Trump’s maddeningly nonsensical claim, a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist”—then everyone who does something so extreme as to cast a vote in favor of X must therefore be fully baked into X’s awfulness, no matter what they claim, it remains, I am convinced, a deeply unhelpful and, frankly, immature thing to believe.

 [Note: in terms of Trump himself, I continue to think “fascist-adjacent” remains the best label. He isn’t the only authoritarian-wanna-be to have occupied the White House or tried to do so, but the cult of personality, exclusion, and resentment which his rise has lent dominance to within an major political party is, I fear, quite arguably unique in our history (Huey Long, maybe? or Theodore Bilbo?), and deserves to be noted, and feared, as such.]

So, a little pedantic social psychology here. Human beings, both singly and in groups, always act in ways that can be assessed on multiple planes of judgment: historical, religious, strategic, aesthetic, and more. To ignore those different planes—which usually means ignoring all the sorts of things you can know about a person that you’ve actually spent face-to-face, real-world time with, someone you’ve listened to and lived alongside, and instead just focusing on random statements forwarded on social media—is to do something intensely reductive, and therefore almost certainly something that fails to take your fellow human beings seriously, in the way that I think the fundamentals of Christianity, to say nothing of the basic premises of any belief in democracy, particularly of the participatory sort, necessitates.

True, the too-often evil vicissitudes of political life sometimes necessitate reductive, immediate distinctions; you can’t save someone from a lynch mob if you insist upon deliberating as to whether or not extra-judicial mob action might be necessary in any given circumstance. But casting a vote simply isn’t the direct equivalent of that, because absent a voter explicitly affirming such, I just don’t see how someone can meaningfully—in the sense of providing evidence which proves a particular conclusion—discover in the casting of a ballot the same intentionality as swinging a rope over a branch. Passionately insisting on the contrary, that actually every vote fully incorporates the most extreme intentions that anyone can historically connect to said vote, only suggests that one must believe we’re at the point where the electoral agency expressed by actual voters no longer matters—that the incorrect yet sincerely believed intentions of my mother and every other Trump-supporting Republican I know is wholly irrelevant. And if that’s the case, why are you worrying about votes at all? Best of luck with your revolution, I guess. (Though I hope you’ll choose to retreat and form an intentional commune rather than engage in armed revolt, because the record of the latter is atrocious and while the former is often inspiring.)

My mom’s vote for Trump (she believes he’ll keep America out of foreign wars) doesn’t surprise me. She’s a life-long American Mormon, and American Mormons who were born in the 1940s and committed themselves to the socially conservative family model that mostly took over American Mormon culture during the 20^th century, particularly after World War II (the Old Right-style anti-communist paranoia of Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson being the key factor here), were pretty consistent supporters of the Republican party, and that has only very recently slowly begun to change. My father was a life-long Republican too, and while I want to believe that he would have been like a number of other Mormon Republicans I know—my wife’s parents, some of my brothers, a couple of my oldest friends in my local Mormon congregation here in Wichita, to say nothing of Mitt Romney, the most famous Mormon Never Trumper of them all—and recognized the awfulness of Trump and voted against him accordingly, I actually suspect that he would have stuck with the GOP until the bitter end. Socializing one’s voting history, religious beliefs, and regional environment together can do that, sometimes.

This is the sort of thing that leads some to insist on the terribleness of party politics and partisanship in general; in particular, in the case of my religious tribe, it leads some of those of us who want to nudge the great bulk of the Republican-voting Mormon faithful in a properly anti-Trump direction (especially if they live in Arizona!), to double-down instead on the curious statement the Mormon church leadership made in 2023: that in addition to encouraging members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the official name of my church) to be active citizens and affirming the church’s official neutrality—positions they emphasize every year—the church leadership insisted that “members should…vote for those [candidates] who have demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others, regardless of party affiliation. Merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy.”

In the same way that I can recognize as coherent (even if stupid) single-issue voting, I can recognize that straight-ticket voting, just supporting every Republican or Democrat down the line, can seem a coherent response to certain conditions—like, for example, party having been so fully captured by single cause or candidate that attempting to stop that party on every level seems like the only reasonable way to express one’s discontent. But thankfully, ticket-splitting is something that, in this moment of intense polarization, is very much an active variable in trying to understand the shape of the 2024 elections. That’s true even here in Kansas, where the historical dominance of the Republican party—there is very close to 2 registered Republican voters for every 1 registered Democrat here in the Sunflower State--exceeds the levels of the Mormon corridor.

A month ago, I spoke at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas about “The Ticket-Splitting Voter.” (You can watch the whole thing here.) One of the other speakers at the event was Stephanie Sharp, a Republican who served three terms in the Kansas House, who is one of the prime movers behind Women 4 U.S., a national organization of self-identifying conservative women determined to work against Trump’s return to the White House. Meeting and talking with her put me in mind of Mormon Women for Ethical Government—an officially non-partisan body that does not engage in any political recruitment, to be sure, but it’s impossible to read their recent defenses of the election system and condemnations of any refusal to accept election results as anything except a rebuke of Trump, what with his constant lies about the 2020 elections and his preparations to lie some more starting this week. MWEG’s membership obviously includes many Democratic and unaffiliated voters, but given its grounding in American Mormonism, and the fact that it got off the ground essentially as a direct response to Trump election in 2016, the sense in which it, like Sharp’s group, and like dozens of other groups like it, all aim to connect with Republican women turned off by Trumpist Republican leaders whose message of protecting women comes off as condescending is hard to deny. Hence, the essential split-ticket voter of the 2024 election: the Republican woman who supports conservative candidates down the line, because that’s what she believes, but votes for Harris at the top of the ticket, because what he represents takes their party in a direction they don’t want it to go. There won’t be remotely as many such split-ticket voters as there will be women—or men, for that matter—who vote a straight-party line, but there may be enough of them to make a difference.

Parties have always included within them various factions, and party leaders—whose primary aim is to win elections, of course—will always be incentivized to paper over those divisions, insisting that their party is a “big tent” which can handle dissent over various issues. But dissent over the party’s own presidential candidate? The Bernie Sanders faction of the Democratic party, despite its grievances, made its peace with and grudgingly supported both Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden, and it seems likely the same will go for Kamala Harris. Yet the complete absence of anti-Trump Republicans of real national prominence from the current GOP campaign, from the 2012 Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney to Trump’s own vice president Mike Pence, as well as multiple important Republican voices essentially washing their hands of the GOP, all suggests an even deeper problem on the Republican side.

Even here in Kansas, with its Republican dominance, Trump is commanding only 48% support in the polls, far less than the 56% he won in both 2016 and 2020. The final numbers when all the ballots are counted will almost certainly be above that—I don’t know anyone who thinks there is even the remotest chance Trump could fail to win Kansas. (Ditto for Utah, where Trump’s approval rating stands at a low but still solid 54%.) But the Republican party is facing a real problem here as well as nationally, whether or not it is a problem that will be manifest in the next Tuesday’s results. It’s a problem evident in the decision of a close friend of mine here in Wichita, a deeply conservative man who has voted Republican his whole life, and has basically no political agreement with any of the policies and proposals of the Democratic party, and yet is going to vote, however symbolically, Harris—because of the January 6 riot at the Capitol which Trump abetted, because he is convinced that Trump is going to allow Putin to do whatever he wants in Eastern Europe, because of his personal corruption and disrespect for the rules of the office, and much more. How can a party present itself as representing his preferences, and at the same time that of another friend of mine, a man who—much more typically for Kansas Republican voters—has gone full MAGA, and is convinced that not only did Trump win in 2020 but also that every action he took or winked at in the wake of that election, including the violence of January 6, was entirely justified?

Some Republicans are responding to this divide by denouncing Trump, like Stephanie has, and organizing to help stop his re-election—but that’s exceptionally rare. More common, among those at least willing to speak are, are Republicans like Steven Howe, a current member of the Kansas House, who back in January condemned Trump’s “deceit and lies” and plead with his own party to turn away from their support for the former president, but then came back around to his party and fell in line when November loomed. And then there is U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, the only one of the Republicans Kansans have elected to Congress who has declined to endorse Trump for president. While he’s never condemned Trump directly either, this is a man who, if you’ve paid attention to his careful speeches over the years, clearly has little respect for the nominal leader of his own party. Again, there is basically no chance any of this electorally significant in either my state, in the same way the pleas of well-connected Mormons in Utah will have basically zero chance of moving the great mass of Republican voters in the Beehive state. But it simply underscores a partisan difficulty that will have to be addressed, one way or another.

Parties have endured in American politics because there is no better way to respond to the incentives of our political and electoral system than by organizing into groups which reflect particular interests by promoting particular candidates. The fact that those parties, once their candidates are elected, are going to work to entrench their influence by fully socializing themselves into the institutional and ideological structures through which those who voted for those candidates operate, is simply a by-product of the logic of our constitutional system itself. I’m fully on board with imagining alternatives to that system—but in the shorter term, the reality of cross-party voting, and the potential rise of fusion voting, might be the only routes available to making parties, which at one time genuinely did, however indirectly, manage to reflect and moderate and promote the best versions of the preferences of those who voted for them, do so again.

Of course, in my view, the even shorter-short term solution to the partisan dilemma both posed by and facing (to whatever degree the leaders of the party are willing to admit it) the Republican party is the defeat of Donald Trump. Which, across this country, hundreds of thousands (and potentially even more) of registered GOP voters will contribute to—but many millions more, including my mother, and most of the members of my Mormon congregation, and much of my family and most of my friends and neighbors here in Kansas, won’t. That’s okay. Frustrating, depressing, potentially frightening, but okay, and I mean that—I’m convinced that if Trump becomes president as a result of either outright Electoral College votes or whatever legal and electoral chaos will almost certainly erupt in less than 48 hours, the country will stumble forward (though whether the legitimacy of our constitutional democracy will remains to be seen).

But will the Republican party? Will those stymied Republicans return to the GOP, or join the Democrats, or push for some other yet unforeseen party or party-like formation? I don’t know. But I suspect that any Republican--particularly those of the Mormon persuasion, given that the party re-alignment this division may potentially give rise to could well, given the processes of socialization, impact religious and cultural assumptions which play major roles in one’s church affiliation and much more—who thinks the era of Re-Elected-Trump, or Post-Trump, will be an easy, or easier, one to navigate are probably in for a surprise. (Hopefully whatever surprise the first of those possibilities might pose for the United States won’t be a whole lot worse.)

A Plea to Kansas Senator Jerry Moran

This morning, I was asked by a small, hastily organized group of Wichita citizens to speak on behalf of "A Kansas Call for a Full and Fair Impeachment Trial." There was almost more media there than people--Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a slow news day, I guess--but many good questions were asked, and hopefully my comments will, in some tiny way, do some good. For whomever is interested, here they are. [Update, 1/27/2020: the Wichita Eagle printed a much shorter and to-the-point version of my comments today here.]

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I'm going to take my inspiration from the title of this event--the organizers which to issue a "Kansas Call" to our senators. The historian and political contrarian within might be tempted to use that as an excuse to invoke Kansas's populist and radical past, and engage in some deep criticism of the whole impeachment process. That would be fun, at least for me. I could talk about how the authors of the U.S. Constitution probably intended impeachment to be, if not routine, than at least a regular part of the way Congress emphasized legislative supremacy over the executive branch, as opposed to politically fraught enormity it has, popularly at least, come to be seen as. Or I could talk about how the authors of the Constitution apparently assumed a classical republican foundation in their thinking about the responsibilities of elected representatives in investigating and pursuing impeachment, and since that foundation soon disappeared, the result is a process that reads today like a strange mish-mash of the partisan and the principled. And that just scratches the surface!

But no, that kind of deep critique wouldn't fly as a true "Kansas call," at least not in 2020. So instead, I'm going to take the Constitution and what it says about impeachment as conservatively and as straightforwardly as I can. Senator Moran has shown himself to be someone whose conservatism isn't solely a reflection of his membership in the Republican party; though mostly a loyal soldier, he has defended small-town rural interests in opposition to his party's priorities, and has refused to sign up in support of the president and his party leadership in regards the matter of executive war powers. So on that basis, I'm going to imagine that he might be a receptive audience to what I have to say.

Senator Moran, as you know, the Constitution says that presidents may be impeached for treason, bribery, or "high crimes and misdemeanors." The latter is not reducible to a clear question of whether or not a law has been broken, though that is one of the main talking points of President Trump's planned defense in the impeachment trial to begin tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's admittedly something other than an obvious determination.

When President Johnson was impeached, the charge taken to the Senate for trial was that his firing of his secretary of defense without informing Congress was a violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the law of the land at the time (a bad law later repealed and widely viewed as unconstitutional anyway, but still an illegal act in 1868). When President Clinton was impeached, the charge taken to the Senate for trial was his lie under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky given during a deposition conducted in connection with another investigation; lying under oath in a legal proceeding being, of course, against the law. In President Trump's case, though, the House impeachment investigation brought forth charges of "abuse of power" (pertaining to his subtle pressuring of the Ukrainian government to begin an investigation into his political rival's son) and "obstruction of Congress" (pertaining to the way he denounced and discouraged compliance with legal subpoenas and other investigative actions taken by the House). These issues are murkier than those in the previous two impeachment trials. Though the Government Accounting Office says otherwise, Trump continues to insist that there was nothing wrong with his phone call to Ukranian president Zelensky, and that in any case, pushing foreign leaders around isn't--or so the president's lawyers say--criminal "abuse." And as for obstructing Congress, well, it won't be hard for those sympathetic to Trump to acknowledge he's a rude loudmouth, a narcissistic blowhard, and then point out that, given his history of hapless fulminating to the crowd, a President of the United States mocking people and slapping them around on Twitter can't be considered the same kind of obstruction as, say, shredding documents. They may have a point.

But of course, that's the rub: someone has to decide if they have a point or not. And that someone includes you, Senator Moran. I urge you to think about what making that judgment call involves.

However politically convoluted or historically dated or theoretically incoherent the process may seem to be, the constitutional facts remain: in the impeachment process, the House, whatever partisan agendas among its membership may or may not exist, investigates and then votes on articles of impeachment--and then you, along with all the other members of the Senate, swore an oath to sit, listen, and act like jurors in a full-on trial. Or in other words, to "do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws." Note that--the Constitution and laws. Which is a recognition that they are not always the same.

This isn't the time or place for a long survey of constitutional theory, so simply accept this: a constitution functions at least as much through the norms, customs, and performative expectations which it shapes as it does through the specific rules that it lays down. The chaos that has attended President Trump's administration, whether or not you think it to have been abetted by his political opponents from the very moment of his election, is at least partly a consequence of the fact that in the way he approaches his executive responsibilities, his relationships with other branches of the government, his treaty obligations to other countries, as so much more, reflects a total disregard for, and often outright ignorance of, all those norms, customs, and expectations. Maybe you're a "Flight 93" conservative, Senator, convinced that the Deep State is out to destroy President Trump and taking delight when he essentially blows raspberries at every tradition that pertains to his office. I doubt that's the case--but even if it is, the role you are in today demands that you conserve a responsible relationship to those norms.

That, of course, doesn't mean you have to agree with the House prosecutors as they make their case for impeaching the president for abusing his power and obstructing Congress. But to call for hearing their case fully, and for considering what witnesses (both the prosecution's and the defense's!) have to say about that case--that would be an honorable way to acknowledge that responsibility. And it would enable you to be able to authentically exercise the judgment which you have before. 

Last year, when President Trump claimed that the emergency at the southern border was all the pretext he needed to appropriate money for building his wall which Congress had not, in fact, constitutionally allocated for that use, Congress, rightly, protested. The House voted against that action (Representative Ron Estes, my congressman and your colleague, voted with the president); as did the Senate--and you voted with the majority, against Trump's (and your own party leadership's) wishes. At that time, you wrote at length about your fear of an "all-powerful executive," the importance of showing some "understanding of history" in making decisions, and most of all about how "the ends don't justify the means." Tomorrow you will begin sitting as a juror in President Trump's impeachment trial, and prominent members of your own party have made it known--despite criticism from the right and the left--that they have already decided what the end should be: namely, Trump's acquittal. That's not a show of judgment, that's not using--as you said you did a year ago--your "intellect" and your "gut." That's just assuming that this whole process is a show, and there's not reason to pretend that it matters. Taking impeachment seriously, by contrast, whatever the flaws and confusions of this example of it, involves being willing to perform a role, and follow through with it to where the evidence--witnesses included!--you feel it leads.

Look, we're all smart people here: we all know, and most of all we know that you know, President Trump will not be impeached. (Similarly, you surely knew that Trump would veto Congress's blockage of his claimed emergency powers last year, which he did.) We're not asking you to make some kind of grand, pointless stand. But we are asking, as your Kansas constituents, that you do what I suspect your own conservative judgment surely calls for you to do: to push back against Senator McConnell's cynical approach, and demand that the trial, with all its customs and trappings, with its witnesses and evidence and two cases ritually presented, be allowed to go forward as the Constitution specifies.  Let the House impeachment managers call witnesses. Let Trump's defense team do likewise. Let the whole process be performed as it ought to be, however convoluted that path that led to this point may be.

Yes, the articles of impeachment sent to you by the House demand, in the end, a judgment call, an assessment of murky issues of presidential expectations and responsibilities, rather than a cut-and-dried application of the law. All the more reason to add your vote to those who will push against the hurried, dismissive (dare I say "Trumpish") approach to this constitutional matter, those who seek to it as fair and impartial as possible. The result may be foregone--but the process isn't. And is anything positive is to come out of the whole impeachment process, it may be a reminder that, so long as we choose to accept the basics of our constitutional order, then constitutional procedure still matters. That's a reasonable judgment, don't you think?

A Tale of Two Congressmen (with a 10-Point Constitutional Excursus)

[The Wichita Eagle ran this morning an editorial of mine praising Senator Jerry Moran, one of my senators here in Kansas, for breaking with his party and voting in support of the resolution to deny President Trump the authority to use his emergency powers to claim non-appropriated funds to build his beloved wall along the Mexican border. Since my argument in that piece touches on matters of constitutionalism and presidential power that I've written about before, I decided to expand on my piece below.]

President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency back in February, which--in his view and that of his lawyers, anyway--gave him the authority to spend taxpayer money to build a wall along our southern border (despite Congress not having constitutionally appropriated funds for him to do so), has been, to say the least, divisive. That divide, or at least one aspect of it, played itself out interestingly in my own back yard--specifically, in the responses of two men men who represent me in Congress: Senator Jerry Moran (left) of Kansas and Representative Ron Estes of the 4th Congressional District of Kansas (right). (And yes, I know, as a resident of Kansas I am technically represented by two senators, but everyone who knows him--including most of those who genuinely like and have voted for him--knows that Senator Pat Roberts checked out of the whole "citizen representation" thing years ago, so I'll just leave him aside.)

Moran and Estes are both conservative Republicans, which is unsurprising--this is Kansas, after all, and despite some interesting developments and potentialities here in Wichita, south-central Kansas remains a pretty conservative place. Moran and Estes reflect that; their voting records show consistent support for identifiably conservative causes and the agenda of President Trump. (In Estes's case, his career congressional vote total is 95% in line with Trump; for Moran, it's a slightly smaller 89%.)  But in this particular case, those two interests--call them "conservatism," however defined, on the one hand, and the Republican party and its leader as a vehicle for expressing conservative goals, on the other--parted ways. You can chart the parting by looking at the comments Estes and Moran issued when Congress held a vote to remove the president’s claimed emergency powers in this case, as allowed under the 1976 law which presidents have invoked whenever they've used their emergency power over the past 40 years. When the House voted on the resolution in late February--and passed it--Estes voted against it. When the Senate voted on the resolution last Thursday--and also passed it, thus requiring President Trump to veto this legislation if he wants his emergency powers claim to move forward--Moran supported it. Why?

On my reading, Estes thought this issue was pretty straightforward. In a four-sentence statement, Estes mentioned President Trump by name three times. He spoke of Trump “rightfully exercising” his presidential powers, and of “supporting the president’s actions to address this crisis.” He was, in other words, voicing what probably seemed to him a straightforward political matter. The President of the United States was doing something which he, as a Republican, agreed with, and so as a good member of the president’s own party, he was going to support him. In this case Estes, as I think his statement clearly reveals, understood himself to be spokesperson for the Trump-supporting Republicans of his district; whatever else Estes may or may not think about any of the larger issues involved, to not support Trump’s agenda--particularly an agenda item that Trump emphasized all through his campaign and ever since--would be a political betrayal of those who voted for him. This is the "delegate" model of representation, and it is perfectly defensible.

For Moran though, the issue was anything but straightforward. His statement also mentioned President Trump by name three times. But that was in the course of a 26-sentence long outline of arguments, which wound around some of the fundamentals of our constitutional system (such as: it is “a violation of the U.S. Constitution” if the executive branch spends money that goes beyond “appropriations approved by Congress”), around fears for the future (such as: “this continues our country down the path of an all-powerful executive, something those who wrote the Constitution were fearful of”), and around basic ethics (such as: “the ends don’t justify the means”). To be sure, he made it clear that he basically agreed with his party’s (overwrought) concern about conditions at the southern border. But in this case, Moran’s conservative, Constitution-protecting values trumped (pun most certainly intended) the president’s aggressive claims to do what he thinks he must about those conditions. In this case, Moran was acting in accordance with the "trustee" model of representation: being entrusted by voters to use all one’s resources and experience to make, on their behalf, difficult decisions–which this one clearly was.

What do I, personally, think about that decision? Well, I think it was a good one--building a wall along our southern border is, in my view, a pointless waste of money, a needlessly and stupidly provocative approach to the problem of illegal immigration, a symbolic move representative of a genuinely inhumane way of relating to our hemispheric neighbors and the rest of the world, and contemptuous downgrading of hundreds of miles of precious environmental space. It ought not be built, and so if Congress can slow Trump's moves in that regard, they ought to. But given that, as a conservative Republican, Moran almost certainly disagrees with all of those points (except possibly the first; I suspect he really does have substantive fiscal complaints about the proposed wall), what about the substance of what actually brought Moran to his decision? That is, what do I think of his constitutional reasoning about the need to curtail the expansion of executive power through emergency declarations and the like?

More than 4 1/2 years ago, President Obama's move to essentially legalize millions of technically illegal residents of the United States created a firestorm of "Unconstitutional!" accusations, and I waded in. This resulted in a series of lengthy arguments between my friends Damon Linker, David Watkins, and myself. Rather than rehearsing all the theoretical claims and counter-claims those blog posts laid out, let me just briefly lay out, in the context of Moran's constitutional case for opposing President Trump's claim, how I think about the whole matter now:

1) Moran writes that, in his view, "if the enduring value of the Constitution disappears...Americans will be less free." I don't entirely disagree with that, but I wouldn't make that claim myself.

2) I wouldn't make it because it suggests to my mind a fetishization of the U.S. Constitution, and the particular sort of freedom it supposedly guarantees.

3) But I think if you look at our Constitution, or the very idea of constitutionalism, both historically and theoretically, you can see that it has primary served as a means of invoking (and thus defining, and thus also limiting) a particular sense of "peoplehood" as connected to a particular polity. In the modern, post-Westphalian world of sovereign capitalist states, that means it turns the demos into a creature under contract, plugged into and committed to (and perhaps empowered by, but perhaps also restricted by) a set of procedures by which "popular sovereignty" is expressed.

4) I'm not calling this a bad thing; on the contrary, liberal constitutionalism has been an important way by which a limited form of democracy could be realized beyond self-governing communities and on a mass scale, which has had many good results. Still, it simply isn't the sine qua non of freedom, and no particular constitution, most certainly including our own property-defending one, shouldn't be treated as such.

5) Does that mean I don't think it's a big deal when someone violates the constitution? No, I think it is a big deal--but I may disagree with many in what kind of big deal I consider it to be.

6) One thing that is essential to understand is that constitutions--again, speaking theoretically as well as historically--have been, and remain, performative in a way bodies of law in general mostly are not. Since constitutions generally do not define, and thereby do not either allow or proscribe certain actions, but rather define and thereby either include or exclude certain persons, or particular certain ways said persons may or may not qualify as citizens, or the particular roles those citizens may or may not execute in diverse ways, there is a qualitative element to questions of constitutionalism that is simply besides the point in most other areas of law.

7) This means it is perfectly reasonable, I think, to declare an action both legal and unconstitutional. Someone--say, a President of the United States--could take an action that is arguably within the realm of legal statutes, but has taken that action in such a way, or justified it with such arguments, or made the choice to take that action in such a context, as to reject the norms, traditions, assumptions, or provisos that have developed in conjunction with the performance of the constitution in question. (This, for everyone who didn't bother to click on the links above, is what I said about Obama's immigration order--legal, but not constitutional.)

8) Now, as those norms themselves perpetuate the way in which the constitution in question is interpreted, and as those interpretation and their continued performance necessarily impact the way in which we as citizens understand ourselves to be governed, it is perfectly logical to understand unconstitutional acts to be a threat to the "peoplehood" under which we our governed.

9) So consequently, when President Trump claims he has the inherent emergency-declaring authority to spend money that Congress, which according to the language of the U.S. Constitution is the only branch of our national government which can authorize the spending of money, has denied him, then he is performing the role of President of the United States badly.

10) The law may or may not make room for the legitimacy of his performance. But in acting in this way, he is challenging the one the primary procedures by which, for better or worse, Americans have historically articulated their democratic sovereignty--and while that may not be an immediate threat to our "freedom," it absolutely challenges (yes, in the same way Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, and most other presidents also challenged) the premises on which this particular democratic polity was, and still is, imagined to work. So, yes--it is a big deal, and worth trying to stop, for whatever reason.

To go back to Moran--however much our reasoning may diverge, note what is the same about it. Moran is thinking about the U.S. Constitution, about how it functions and what it means. We don't think about it the same way, but his thinking about it, however much I might dispute elements of it, is serious. And it is always impressive to see someone in Congress think seriously about not just the political popularity, or the partisan necessity, of a given issue, but rather about, for example, the danger of establishing a “precedent for future presidents” (as Moran did). Estes’ statement invoked President Trump, and for many voters around here that was enough; but Moran, on the other hand, invoked his “understanding of history,” his “intellect,” and his “gut.” That is a hard decision, and I think it is one deserving of praise.

Not that my praise necessarily matters a great deal. After all, I’m neither a Republican (though I do vote for some on occasion) nor a conservative (though I hold to some conservative views); as such, the core supporters of both men can dismiss these thoughts of mine out of hand. But aside from that, I am also an American citizen and a resident of Wichita, Kansas, and as such, these two men represent me in Washington, D.C. So as someone you represent: thank you, Senator Moran.Though I may often disagree with you politically, this week you’ve earned my appreciation, and my trust.

Dear Congress: Please Make President Obama Look Bad on Syria (Even if Your Reasons for Doing So Are Wrong)

[Cross-posted to Political Context]

To Senators Roberts and Moran and Representative Pompeo,

Sometime in the next week or so, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will schedule votes on whether or not Congress will give its authorization (or, depending on who you talk to or what the language of the coming resolution may include, "support") for President Obama to go forward with the plan which he and his security team have clearly already decided upon: to strategically bomb certain military sites in Syria as a response to the information (which they, at least, are certain of) that the Syrian government of Bashar Hafez al-Assad has used, in violation of widely accepted principles of international law, chemical weapons like sarin gas to kill hundreds of civilian supporters of the rebellion against his rule which he currently is fighting. Since you're my senators and my local representative here in the 4th congressional district in the state of Kansas, I thought I'd share my opinion about this upcoming vote with you. I think you should embarrass President Obama, and give him a big "no."

Some part of all of you, I strongly suspect, already wants to do this. After all, this is something President Obama wants, and agreeing with him on really anything at all is a guaranteed loser with a decent chunk of the Kansas electorate. This suggests that voting against whatever the resolution ultimately says is plain old smart constituent service, not to mention a way to burnish your bona fides as solid and faithful conservative Kansas Republicans. All you need to do is cook up some talking points which explain why Obama and his team don't understand what you think they should understand about the war in Syria, and hence can't possibly be trusted to manage any kind of military action at all, and you'd be good to go. That's justification isn't, in my view, remotely accurate, but if you want to run that way, it'll at least mean you'll be voting the way I think you should, so I won't complain.

Of course, that will put you at odds with your own party leadership, with Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor climbing on board the president's bandwagon, and Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham warning all their fellow Republicans of the "catastrophic" consequences of a no vote. I suppose one way to negotiate this would be to follow along with the lead that you've already laid out, Rep. Pompeo; make all the appropriate neoconservative noises about the need for the United States to develop a "more vigorous, much more robust" plan of action in Syria, one that presumably would go beyond Obama's stated intention to become the world's international-law-enforcer and would likely instead militarily obligate us to real action in the Syrian civil war, and then vote against whatever the resolution actually says, because it doesn't go far enough. In my view, this justification is even worse than the previous one, but at least it would result in a no vote, so I'll accept it.

I suppose it's possible that you may feel inclined to vote no because you've been tempted by the isolationist, anti-war position of Senator Rand Paul & Co. This probably isn't something you'll want to admit to, because while the Kansas Republican Party obviously values the libertarian money and influence of Koch Industries and Americans For Prosperity, actually identifying with any of their ideological principles--in this case, that America shouldn't be an empire, and that no large institution (including the U.S. military and/or our intelligence community!) should ever be trusted--can complicate things when it comes to striking deals in Washington, or maintaining your image in the Kansas public eye as a mainstream, patriotic, socially conservative Republican. As for myself, well, I'm not at all on board with that whole movement, but there's more than a little of it which I have come to admire, and so if that's what leads you to vote the way I'd prefer, I'm all in favor.

What kind of reasons am I more in favor of? Ones that acknowledge that the situation in Syria is a tragic, terrible mess, with neither side representing the sort of interests or ideas that warrant American military involvement. Ones that recognize that labeling the use of chemical weapons as a "red line" which no civilized can cross without suffering retributionary punishment is, without a united international community, an arbitrary and essentially unenforceable standard, one that no nation which doesn't claim (as I should hope the United States has gotten tired of claiming by now!) for itself full-fledged imperial responsibilities for the world ought to make. Ones that admit--as I, a former liberal internationalist hawk, someone who will probably always find Wilsonian humanitarianism at least faintly appealing, has nonetheless learned to admit--that while of course inaction is itself an affirmative choice, one that carries with it all sorts of what-might-have-been burdens, that fact isn't alone sufficient reason to feel impelled to do something (anything!) in response to an obvious evil. Invoking the "responsibility to protect" rightly directs us towards an engagement with a distant tragedy; it does not require any particular response to said tragedy...especially when, as is the case with America's track record towards military adventures, there is good reason to believe such a military response will not only fail to be thoughtfully limited, but will also be corrupted by our own oversized, wanna-be-but-not-really imperial baggage.

Most of all, I'd like to see a no vote in Congress based on a refusal to continue in the decades-long abandonment of Congressional responsibility for the military actions of our national government. I am not naive here; I realize that as much as I might wish to have a political culture and a constitutional order which takes carefully and literally the idea that the legislative branch, and the legislative branch alone, carries the responsibility for authorizing when and how American soldiers will kill and be killed, I'm not going to get it. Presidents have been assuming for themselves an expansive reading of their authority as commander-in-chief since the beginning of American history--and even they hadn't, the global powers and obligations which presidents have trafficked in since WWII makes a strong logical case for them to do so now. Congress's mad grasp to clarify their role in the midst of burgeoning presidential powers, the War Powers Resolution (a hastily and confusedly written piece of legislation, I know!), may be the law of the land, but every president since Nixon has dismissed it as unconstitutional, and there is little chance of it emerging as a legal cause to either tie the president's hands or--more likely--complicate the funding which President Obama will ask for when he goes forward with the bombing, whether Congress gives him a resolution "authorizing" (or, as Secretary of State Kerry insists, just supporting) the use of force or not.

In the end, this is a political stratagem on the part of the president. So why don't I think Congress should just play along and go on to other things? Because, silly as it may seem, I really do believe in legislative supremacy; I really don't want the United States to continue along the imperial course which George W. Bush put us upon; and I really do think military adventurism is one of the primary causes for the executive's endlessly expanding power. Unwinding all that will take far more than any single vote (especially since, once American equipment and manpower are committed, Congress will almost certainly find itself politically incapable of exercising any budgetary restraints of any further adventurism--"supporting the troops" is just too potent, and poisonous, a bloody flag to wave). But in this case, a "yes" vote will be more than meaningless...while a "no" vote might, just might, become a line in the sand which those who want to limit America's role in the world could build upon. As actually serving politicians in Washington DC, my dear senators and representative, it's unlikely that you're really interested in such limits. But with any luck, for whatever reason occurs to you, perhaps you'll vote in a way to provide those who are so interested with a start. That's my hope, anyway.

A Conservative Delegate or a Conservative Trustee?

A week from today, Kansas will be holding its primary elections (the complete rundown of candidates is here). State-wide, most of the races in this off-year election season are forgone conclusions; in a state that leans strongly Republican, with large (and well-funded) cohorts of both Christian traditionalists and fiscal libertarians supporting conservative candidates and causes, there is basically no doubt that the Republicans will dominate the state legislature, that our next governor will be retiring U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, and that our newest senator will be either Representative Todd Tiarht or Representative Jerry Moran, both of whom have been drenching the airwaves with negative ads, in a desperate effort to move every possible registered Republican voter in the state away from their (equally conservative) opponents and into their camp. I salute the Democrats going up against these machines for their citizenship and their optimism, but I confess I'm not really paying these races much attention.

The one place where I do see some genuinely interesting small-d democratic possibilities--that is, electoral choices that could really make a difference in government--is in the four House district races. Not all of them, of course. Despite a crowded Republican field, with the potential for infighting, standing against a single Democratic candidate, the first district in western Kansas is about as Republican it's possible to be, so there's unlikely to be any action there once the primary is over. In the second district, though, you've had the seat go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats lately, by relatively narrow margins. In the third district, you have a relatively popular Democrat retiring, with his wife running in the Democratic primary to replace him, and a large number of Republicans jostling for the chance to run against her. And then, there's my home district here in Wichita, the fourth.

The Democratic primary, assuming the well-funded (and smart, and admirable--I've met and like the guy) Raj Goyle and his people do their job well, should be cake-walk for him. It's on the Republican side, though, where most of my attention has been drawn. We've got a couple of very big-spending and well-connected heavyweights driving the polls, and then three reputable candidates nipping at their heels. With only a week to go, it's unlikely that much could change to alter the enormous advantages in name recognition and early voting that the two leaders have piled up...but something about the race really stirred the goo-goo part of my heart. One of the trailing primary candidates, Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf, broke with her party to help pass a truly responsible bit of legislation: an admittedly less-than-brilliantly-conceived, but nonetheless absolutely necessary, sales tax increase to prevent our public education system from having to suffer even further cuts to salaries, services, and more. In making that vote (which even the almost-certain Democratic candidate in this House race, Kansas Representative Goyle, wasn't willing to support), she did something difficult: she faithfully executed the difficult work which her election, in part, had entrusted to her. I like that, and it got me thinking about the different theories of representation, and how the representative story her career tells differs dramatically from what the one implied by her rivals for the Republican nomination.

So anyway, it inspired me to write up a column, and submit it to the Wichita Eagle. They've run stuff by me before, but at this point I don't think my piece will see the light of day. So here it is. Enjoy, if you feel so inclined.

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For many people, the upcoming primary contest to determine who the Republican nominee for the 4th Congressional district will be isn't much of a contest at all. While polls vary, the overall trend is clear: Wink Hartman and Mike Pompeo appear to be far better known, with many more vocal supporters, than any of their rivals. In fact, their level of popular support is about twice that of their nearest rival, Jean Schodorf.

This doesn't surprise me. Election after election has taught that if you have the money to buy signs and television time, to recruit talent and volunteers, to rent facilities and hold rallies, then you can usually drive the contest results. According to campaign finance reports, Hartman and Pompeo have together spent over $1.3 million on getting themselves elected, whereas Schodorf had spent less than $30,000, with other candidates spending even less. Media attention follows the money, polls follow media attention, polls attract more money, and so on.

In the midst of this seemingly inevitable process, though, there is always the possibility of surprises. Most of the time, if such an upset occurs, it will be because something or someone changed the narrative of the contest, and voters unexpectedly start thinking differently. The narrative which Hartman and Pompeo are banking on, however, appears to be a pretty stable one. It is a narrative about who is the most “conservative” candidate in the race. Into this narrative, recognizable by the way in which each candidate reiterates their position on numerous tried--and true conservative points–smaller government, lower taxes, military strength, protected borders, opposition to abortion, etc.--the two main candidates have poured all their efforts.

In political science, there is an oft-repeated distinction made between two models of representation. Voters may support a candidate because they believe she or he will be a better delegate, or because they believe she or he will be a better trustee. The “delegate” model sees the point of representation as electing someone who believes exactly as you do: since you can’t personally go to Topeka or Washington, DC, the aim is to elect a politician who mirrors your preferred views as much as possible, so as to directly take your place in the halls of government. Hence, what is important is to run down the checklist of beliefs, and to match oneself to a candidate as closely as possible.

The “trustee” model, on the other hand, assumes that, since government involves complex issues and less-than-ideal choices, the point is to elect someone you trust. Since the difficult work of government is to be entrusted to someone on behalf of all the voters within a particular district, state, or nation, you need to make sure that someone is responsible. Agreement on beliefs is important, but not an absolute, since while all voters have their preferences, government decision-making will never satisfy every preference, and compromises will often be necessary.

It’s interesting--and also not particularly surprising--to see the leaders of the Republican primary race competing furiously to prove themselves to be the most perfect conservative delegate. Our national political culture today mostly revolves around various scandals and controversies, not the hard work of governing, and so most voters end up looking to candidates, wanting to learn about their positions on such controversial issues. Certainly Hartman and Pompeo do not disappoint. Their websites are filled with references to defending “family values,” “small business values,” “American values,” and more. All good things, of course, but also rather broad, ideological things. Actual governing specifics and recommendations are not in much evidence.

The Schodorf campaign, underfunded as it may be, appears to be following a different narrative. When asked about “Obamacare,” Schodorf has talked carefully about what she dislikes about the health care reform law, but also what she likes about it. Her website lists specifically about what she has done, and what she would do, about Social Security, Medicare, agriculture, and more. She has defended her support of the recent sales tax increase as the responsible thing to do, if Kansas didn’t want to face even more cuts in public education. In short, Schodorf is presenting herself as a conservative candidate with a record of wisely caring for the public trust.

As the general elections for 2010 approach it is easy to suppose that what we are seeing is grand referendum on President Obama and the Democratic party. If such is the case, then perhaps local and state government issues don’t matter too much; what matters is getting one’s views on these broad, ideological issues heard in Washington DC. And in that case, Hartman and Pompeo are right to compete to be named the most dependable conservative delegate to be sent to the nation’s capital (after all, in the Senate Republican primary race, Tiahrt and Moran are doing the same).

But the truth, of course, is that even in the midst of nation-wide struggles over ideas, government still has work that needs to be done: among other things, teachers still need to be paid. To be sure, no serious candidate ever presents themselves solely as either a delegate or a trustee, and no voter would think solely in one way or another. But of all those Republicans running in the 4th Congressional district, right now only one seems to be attempting to follow more than just the simple delegate narrative. Former Republican senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker has noticed that. Before next Tuesday, I wonder if anyone else will.