[How close did the United States come to a presidential coup
d’état on January 6, 2021? This is among the questions Bob Woodward
and Robert Costa ask in their new book. Its a question the nation
needs to ponder, as well.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

PERIL   [[link removed]]

 

Walter Clemens
September 27, 2021
New York Journal of Books
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_ How close did the United States come to a presidential coup
d’état on January 6, 2021? This is among the questions Bob Woodward
and Robert Costa ask in their new book. It's a question the nation
needs to ponder, as well. _

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_Peril_
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 13: 9781982182915

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa detail many of the reasons why everyone
should worry about the future of the United States. Fearful that the
outgoing president might launch a war to divert the public from the
presidential election, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark
Milley, in late 2020 and early 2021 phoned his Chinese counterpart to
assure him that the United States was “stable.” He instructed the
Pentagon’s top brass that no branch of the armed forces should fire
a nuclear or other weapon without his express go-ahead. Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi grilled Milley in private on how he could prevent
the president from pushing the buttons to order the launch of nuclear
weapons. Milley assured Pelosi that structures were in place to stop
any such action that was not legal, ethical, or necessary.

Pelosi, rightly so, was not relieved by Milley’s assurances. The
president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He has the legal
right to launch military actions. Some lawyers could surely defend
whatever he did as legal, ethical, and necessary. Woodward and Costa
give us many details of the Milley-Pelosi exchanges but leave the
question unanswered: What is to stop any president from triggering a
nuclear Armageddon? A similar question confronts the governments of
every nuclear-armed country, each equipped with early warning systems
even less dependable than the Pentagon’s.

A second reason this book should worry US citizens (and democrats
everywhere) is its depiction of the vulnerability of America’s
vaunted tripartite division of powers to a presidential coup
d’état. In 2021 Milley wondered whether the January 6 attacks on
the Capitol had been a dress rehearsal for a more successful
revolution—as Russia’s 1905 Revolution was to the October 1917
Bolshevik takeover.

Apart from these major issues, Woodward and Costa give us interesting
and significant information on the individuals who have shaped US
politics—Joe Biden in his early years in Washington as well as in
2020–2021; Biden’s father, his wife, his children—including how
they all sought to constrain son Hunter; Biden’s friends and
advisers as they helped him weigh the pros and cons of an election
campaign.

We also learn a great deal about those who hovered close to Donald
Trump—his children and his third wife; Steve Bannon; Bill Barr; and
the sycophants at Fox News. We learn not only what they said and did
but the idiosyncrasies that help explain their actions.

This very comprehensive book includes Biden’s discussions with Mitch
McConnell and others on his infrastructure and other costly proposals.
It summarizes the second impeachment trial for Trump. The former
president watched the proceedings, in February 2021, from his home in
Florida, criticizing his own defense lawyer Bruce Castor for wearing
an oversized suit and being too long-winded. Woodward and Costa quote
Mitch McConnell’s speech after Trump’s acquittal. The top
Republican in the Senate voted to acquit but called January 6 an act
of terrorism fueled by people “fed wild falsehoods by the most
powerful man on earth. . . .”

The book could end with McConnell’s dilemma: oppose a politician he
did not like or do whatever seems necessary to save the Republican
Party. But Woodward and Costa go on to analyze the putative Democratic
senator, Joe Manchin, who could sabotage Biden’s plans to revive the
nation. His resistance to Biden’s big spending programs was because,
he said, “I represent West Virginia.”

Woodward and Costa consider America’s horizon in 2021 and conclude:
“Whether the county was witnessing the end of Trump or the beginning
of the next phase of Trump would only be known in retrospect.” To
evaluate those alternatives, this book must be on the reading list of
the concerned citizen. We are fortunate that, despite the diet of
distorted alternative facts fed to many Americans, hard-driving
journalist-historians like Woodward and Costa can investigate and
publish such a well-founded version of recent and current events.

Walter Clemens is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Boston
University. His most recent book is _The Republican Virus in the Body
Politic: How to Reboot America._

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