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A must-read column from AJC's
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It's Over. Now is the Time for Unity.
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By Jason Isaacson
January 6, 2021
The presidency of Donald J. Trump could have and should have ended on
a high note.
After years of sowing uncertainty about America's commitment to
global leadership, the Trump administration in its final five months
proved a powerful force for Middle East peace and cooperation, playing
a key role in tripling the number of Arab states that have normalized
relations with Israel.
In the administration's final year, it strengthened ties with
the world's most populous democracy, India; intensified the
strategic partnership of eastern Mediterranean democracies; eliminated
the mastermind of Iran's regional aggression; and set the stage
for a rebalancing of trade relations with China.
What history will surely highlight, however, is not the string of
foreign policy achievements as President Trump neared the end of his
term, but the grave dangers he posed to American democracy and the
rule of law by his refusal to accept that end culminating in the
violence he provoked at the U.S. Capitol.
It didn't have to be this way. The weeks since the
President's defeat on November 3 could have been filled with
tributes to an unorthodox peacemaker, re-evaluations of the centrality
of American leadership in global affairs, and reflections on the
necessity of international cooperation in a public health crisis.
Instead, these weeks have been filled with dread about the prospect
of a sudden military action undertaken more to advance domestic
political rather than national security objectives; with the
concoction and promulgation of conspiracy theories; with legal and
legislative efforts in multiple states, nearly all of them baseless
and dismissed, to nullify legally cast and counted votes; and with the
promotion of plans to overturn in Congress the results of an election
certified by the administration's own election integrity and law
enforcement officials as legitimate.
The assault on democratic norms and traditions has been relentless:
first President-elect Biden being denied transition funds, then his
advisers being denied access to the agencies they'll soon be
managing; the rollout of major regulatory changes and federal lands
contracts in the final days of the administration the very opposite
of previous administrations' stewardship in the interregnum
before an inauguration.
The latest offenses after spending two months seeking to convince
America that he really had won an election he lost by some seven
million votes were his threats and arm-twisting directed at the
Georgia Secretary of State last Saturday to "find" enough
votes to change that state's presidential outcome, and his
promotion of a "wild" and ultimately violent rally in
Washington, his third since Election Day, to coincide with and steal
attention from the joint session of Congress called to certify the
Electoral College vote.
America doesn't deserve this. The scores of Republican members
of Congress, but notably far from all, who continue to embrace the
President's claims of a stolen election, claims roundly rejected
by Republican and Democratic election officials and state and federal
judges across the land, jeopardize their honor and put at risk their
oath to defend the constitution. A President duly elected and then
duly defeated discredits his service by not only failing to
acknowledge reality but by using every available platform to encourage
his vast following to distrust the electoral process, undermining the
American social contract.
It is time actually, it is past time to bring this dark chapter to
an end.
Conducted amidst a pandemic that sickened America and the world, left
hundreds of thousands dead, millions in mourning, and tens of millions
in economic distress, the election of 2020 was an unprecedented
ordeal. But it is over. Ballots were cast and counted and recounted
and the Electoral College voted. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost. Now
we must move on.
The challenges facing our country will not be resolved, will not even
begin to be addressed, if the next two years or the next four years
are consumed by political tribalism and demonization, if every line of
communication is choked with accusation, if good faith is taken for
naivete and cynicism for sagacity.
America's two great parties offer different routes to fulfill
a striving people's aspirations but their ultimate goals of
opportunity, security, and justice for all are closely matched. Let us
find ways to join forces to achieve those common goals.
Let 2021 be the year, after the tragedy and turmoil we've just
endured, that America's democratic principles are restored, its
traditions of civil discourse affirmed, and its political leaders
across party lines dedicated to healing and uniting a deeply scarred
country.
Jason Isaacson is the Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer of
the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee (AJC).
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