This is nothing like a ‘revolutionary’ moment – US democracy is more robust than Trump’s detractors think

“Coup!”, “Insurrection!”, “Anarchy!” scream the headlines, and the alarms have been rung around the world. The chaotic scenes from the US Capitol, as Congress began proceedings to confirm the election of Joe Biden as the next US president, have unleashed a fresh wave of panic about the supposedly fragile state of US democracy.

To many, it reinforced fears that four years of Donald Trump in the White house had inflicted permanent damage on the US body politic. To a few, with a more international and historical perspective, what happened offers but a foretaste of the terminal decline of the western world. Farewell, the United States as we knew it. Farewell, liberal democracy. Farewell, the familiar world order. China, Russia and the rest will have the last laugh. The autocrats and dictators, the populists have won.

Except that they haven’t, have they? A mob a few thousand-strong breached what now look like the scandalously inadequate defences of the US Capitol. Some of them ran amok. Many walked tidily between the ropes designed for tourists. They had been led to believe – by the protestations of the defeated president, by conspiracies disseminated by social media, but mostly perhaps by their own longstanding suspicion of the state – that the election had been subverted and that they were massing to prevent the last stage in the confirmation of a pretender. They failed.

In a matter of hours, order was restored. Congress resumed its joint session amid deafening applause. By dawn, Joe Biden’s election was confirmed. The vice president, the outgoing and incoming Senate leaders, and the president-elect off-stage, all made solemn speeches in defence of democracy and the US democratic process.

I have never seen President Trump look more apprehensive, even scared, than he did in his video, where he assured the Capitol invaders they were “very special” before imploring them to “go home, and go home in peace”. As Congress concluded its session, the White House issued a statement in Trump’s name pledging: “Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election ... nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on 20 January."

None of that suggests to me that we are looking at a fragile democracy. The United States looks much more like a state that has successfully preserved its self-respect, a state – what is more – whose constitutional processes have proved themselves entirely robust enough to withstand what will soon seem a minor hindrance in the sweep of history. Yes, Americans need to guard their democracy. They need to show vigilance – don’t we all? But at this very moment, they might do better to review the security of their Capitol building than beat themselves up over the stability of their state.

It has been said at times over the past four years that the presidency of Donald Trump has provided a stress-test for the US constitution. And that is true. But it is a stress test that, for all the hostility and self-doubt of his adversaries, the United States has passed with mostly flying colours. In one way, the mixture of fury, concern and hostility shown mostly by Americans of a broadly liberal disposition has been admirable. More so, though, is the way in which it has been channelled into the democratic process.

From the horror of so many that anyone like Trump could be elected at all, through the aggressive questioning he faced from much of the media, to the level of electoral engagement – both in November and at this week’s decisive run-offs in Georgia – this is how opposition should work. There were times when the liberals overstepped the mark in their distaste for Trump and played into his supporters’ hands. There was a condescension towards their Trump-voting compatriots that was as undemocratic as some of what Trump tried to do. The personal is not always political.  

For the best part of four years, however, this highly unconventional, disruptive, president was kept within constitutional bounds. When he tried to slash travel and immigration, it was not just the Supreme Court that weighed in, ruling some of his proposed measures illegal, but activists, too. On much, he could move the dial a little, but he could not shift it 180 degrees, still less abolish it. And he had to accept that.

His Supreme Court nominees faced the same confirmation process as others before them. (Nor have they, so far, shown themselves to be overly political or unqualified.) His alleged dealings with Russia were investigated, and he was absolved of “collusion”. But Congress nonetheless had the power to constrain his hopes for a rapprochement with Moscow, and used it. He was impeached (over an appeal to Ukraine) – and acquitted.

This is how democracy, or US-style, democracy works – and it did work. The US held what was probably one of its smoothest and cleanest presidential elections ever – amid the pandemic. Trump lost. not by much, but he lost. His attempts to resist the inevitable came to nothing. US democracy has made him a one-term president. Joe Biden will be inaugurated on 20 January.

All this smacks not of fragility, but of solidity. The system, the constitution, has coped with a potentially dangerous president, just as it coped – in fact, less sure-footedly – with the “tied” election of 2000. Which is why this is nothing like a “revolutionary” moment. The context is quite different; the fundamentals are intact.

In this – and not just because what is being called the “storming” of the Capitol failed – it is nothing like France 1789, Russia 1917, as described by eye-witnesses, or the revolutions across Europe that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall. It bears no resemblance, either to the failed Soviet coup of August, 1991, Boris Yeltsin's storming of his own parliament two years later, or the 2014 Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine. In all these instances, the fundamentals of the state, such as they were, were already tottering. When the crisis happened, at what would be seen with hindsight as the turning point, there was a real sense of not knowing what the next day, or hour, might bring.

That is not the United States today. Yes, it is a sharply divided country, but so, currently, are many democracies. But it remains a constitutional democracy, and more stable, I would suggest, than it was during the 1960s, when the established order was under challenge from assassinations, civil rights protests, almost routine police violence and the generational rift over the Vietnam War.

Donald Trump has been seen as an “insurgent” president, politically aligned against Washington. But the limits of his power to defy Washington have now been demonstrated twice over: first in how much of his agenda he was able to accomplish as president, and now in what may or may not have been a serious attempt to incite “the people” to override the established democratic process. US democracy survives – but how threatened was it really?

China is already using this week’s events in Washington – as, no doubt, will many other non-democracies – to rebuff US criticism of their conduct, to point to the hypocrisy in the way successive US administrations have supported pro-democracy movements in other people’s countries, and to denounce the undemocratic character of US-incited regime change. Nor can it be disputed that the footage from the Capitol has done the US no favours abroad.

At home, though, the balance looks rather different. Donald Trump may have sullied the presidency in many ways, but he departs with the US constitution triumphantly intact and US democracy in a generally healthier condition than when he arrived. 

The state of Georgia alone – which will now send two Democrat senators to Washington, one of them black – is testimony to that. So the message from the dramas of this week should not be alarm, but the opposite: keep calm, dear Americans, and carry on!