Column: Political Ambitions Leave Nation Struggling to Move Forward – Southern Pines Pilot

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. With those words, James Madison explained why, in the Constitution he was asking people to support in 1788, it was vital that the national government have a system of what our civics books like to call checks and balances. Each branch of government needed the means to call the others to account if they ran astray.

He wrote those words in what we now call Federalist No. 51. That makes it the 51st essay in the series of over 100 that he and Alexander Hamilton, with a little help from John Jay, wrote to encourage New Yorkers to scrap the Articles of Confederation and adopt the Constitution they and their fellow Federalists were advocating.

These essays have come to be considered an owners manual for the Constitution they explain in great (sometimes laborious) detail the reasoning behind its every feature and facet.

Madisons words hold the key to understanding our system of government. I tell my students at Sandhills that if they can master Madisons arguments in his two most important essays Federalist No. 10 and No. 51 they can easily understand the America of 1788 or, for that matter, the America of 2021.

In Madisons time, the ambitions that had to be counteracted were similar to the ones that we encounter today. Madison had to tussle with Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Their equals today, in ambition if not in intellect, are Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

James Madison would neither be surprised nor especially disappointed by the shenanigans of this trio: His best-known phrase If men were angels, no government would be necessary gives us insight into his dark view of human nature. To put it simply, Madison expected that, because of human nature, our country would always have to deal with people like President Trump and his equally ambitious detractors.

So what of the latest effort of one branch to counteract the other? Mr. Trump has clearly run afoul of Congress. People are really, really mad about what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 so mad in fact that they impeached a president who had less than a week left in office.

Is this political overkill? Couldnt the Congress simply have censured him and spared us another act in this tragic political theater?

In my opinion the answer to that is yes and no.

The actions of the Capitol mob on Jan. 6 were reprehensible. But I believe that if Mr. Trumps words on that day are heard in their entirety, they do not rise to the level of inciting sedition.

Sorry, folks, but they just dont. Yes, the former president has a mouth that moves faster than his brain I suffer from that myself and yes his words could have been chosen much more wisely.

One of the responsibilities of leadership is to use words wisely. Donald Trump may have never learned that lesson, but his words on Jan. 6 did not, in my mind, rise to the level of encouraging insurrection against the United States.

That, however, does not get Mr. Trump off the hook. It is his words and actions between the election and Jan. 6 that showed us why his ambition did indeed need to be counteracted by the ambitions of Speaker Pelosi and Sen. McConnell.

In the two months between election day and Jan. 6, Mr. Trump used every opportunity he had to claim that he had won in a landslide over Joe Biden. In so doing, he was creating his own fake news and stoking the resentment of his followers who had just seen their candidate beaten. Poor losers are no fun whatsoever.

Refusing to concede his defeat, Mr.Trump instead sent out his clownish personal attorney to argue that the election had been stolen, promising to deliver mountains of evidence that somehow never appeared. Not one recount ever uncovered the votes that the president wanted election officials to find.

Not one court state, federal or Supreme saw enough evidence to take these claims seriously. Another case of the liberal judges? Actually, many judges and Justices that turned away Mr. Trumps claims were Republicans, and a good number had been appointed by Mr. Trump himself.

In truth, the president was simply attempting to stay in office by undermining the bedrock of our democracy: the peoples belief in the fairness of our elections and the integrity of our political institutions.

It is now estimated that nearly a third of Americans have lost that belief. This is an American tragedy, and only one man could have stopped it. Because Mr. Trump chose not to stop it, he committed an enormous disservice to his legacy, to his office and to the United States.

I have spent the better part of my life either serving or studying the government of the United States. I am aware of its flaws, but have a strong belief in its fundamental goodness. Like any citizen I have had disagreements with my government, but they have been about its policies rather than about its institutions themselves. I have pledged my allegiance to those institutions probably a thousand times. To have their integrity questioned by an American president in a way that causes a third of Americans to lose faith in them is sad beyond words.

As for impeachment, I dont have much taste for it right now. While I hold Mr. Trumps ambition in disdain, I have nearly equal disdain for that of Pelosi and McConnell. Lets let Mr. Trump go away, and lets focus instead on a brighter day. Lets leave this sordid business behind us, and remember that Mr. Madisons view of our nature doesnt have to be the last word.

What if we were to rise as Americans in a way that might surprise Mr. Madison? What if we were to look for guidance in the words of another great American, and move forward from this date With Malice Toward None, With Charity For All?

John Dempsey is the president of Sandhills Community College.

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Column: Political Ambitions Leave Nation Struggling to Move Forward - Southern Pines Pilot