If the Trump presidency has shown anything, it’s the robustness of the US constitution

Trump does not fit the standard model of a president and has pushed at those boundaries – but they are yet to break, writes Mary Dejevsky

If Trump loses, he will leave – grumpily perhaps, but he will leave (Getty)

It is three months and a bit before the November election, and Donald Trump would appear to be a worried man. Trailing his Democrat challenger, Joe Biden, by almost 10 points in the polls, he has reintroduced his daily press conferences, moderated his tone (for how long?), and become an advocate of mask-wearing. He has also ordered hundreds of federal agents – as he argues – to bolster law and order in certain restive cities and states.

The positive poll news for the Democrats, though, has not been matched by increased confidence in their ranks, at least not among the fiercely anti-Trump chattering classes. They worry that Trump might try to “steal” the election – as, in their view, happened last time – or even refuse to accept defeat. Underlying these fears is a more profound apprehension about US politics in general, reflecting their bafflement that someone like Trump could have become president at all. Woe is us, they lament, US democracy is lost.

To which I would say: Cheer up, Americans! Your governments – federal and state – may not have been handling the coronavirus pandemic too well (then again, your health system was never going to be a strong point in a crisis), but your democracy is not nearly in as parlous a state as you seem to think. Or maybe it is just that the balance of pluses and minuses is clearer to those of us outside the fog of your political war.

Let’s start with the basics. Yes, the US electoral system has its defects. They were mercilessly exposed in the election of 2000. You vote using machines that differ in specification from state to state – which is fine if you are voting for state offices, but less fine when you are voting for president. Worse, you had no sure mechanism for a state-wide recount – remember the bitter comedy of the “hanging chads”? (I have some immortalised in a glass paperweight on my desk as I write.) The recount decision ended up at the Supreme Court; what sort of a system is that? Our pencil-and-paper routine not only protects us from cyber-interference (as the UK’s Russia Report noted this week), but a re-count can be conducted within a few hours.

Then there is your electoral college. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote across the United States by nearly 3 million votes, but she lost the election, because Trump had more electors – a lot more electors, 304 to 227 – in the electoral college. Some argued, and still argue, that this makes his presidency illegitimate. But unless or until you change the system – and there are arguments both ways – the risk of this mismatch will persist. The candidates have to accept the result on the system as it stands. Trump won; get over it

Then there is the not insignificant matter of who gets to vote. Criminals (“felons”) are deprived of that right, sometimes even after they have served their term. All right, that is your system. But prisoners whose vote should have been restored may find, when they reach the polling station, that their name is missing from the register. The electoral rolls are perhaps not updated as assiduously as they should be. If you are black or Hispanic or poor, you may also find it harder to get to a polling station and have far longer to wait when you get there than a white voter in a more favoured area. The failings of US democracy are many.

Now, some of the procedural weaknesses have been addressed since the embarrassments of 2000. But new weaknesses have arisen. The big fear, it would appear, this time around is of foreign – ie Russian – interference. Talk about fighting the last battle. Robert Mueller’s investigation found that there had been no “collusion” between the Trump camp and any Russians (the central reason why the inquiry was launched) and that any Russian agitation via social media was spread among different candidates and did not sway the result. If US systems are not more resilient this time around, they should be.

The other fear, though, after the prospect of Trump winning a second term, is that even if he loses, he could refuse to accept defeat, especially if the margin is small. We are not talking here about contesting a close result; either candidate would be entitled to do that. We are talking – or Trump’s enemies are talking – about just sitting in the White House and refusing to move, to the point, perhaps, where the military could be called in (by whom?) to force him out. To which I can only respond: Come on, Americans – you really are succumbing to your nightmares here. If Trump loses, he will leave – grumpily perhaps, but he will leave. And if it looks in the coming weeks as though he has no chance of winning, there is a chance that he may not run at all.

But why am I so sure that if he does run and is defeated, he will go quietly? Because, over the past almost four years, every time he has lost, whether in the Supreme Court, in Congress, or in the court of public opinion, he has ended up accepting the verdict.

As his enemies and friends alike would surely concur, Trump is not a conventional politician. He came to the presidency via a business career of mixed fortunes and a profile magnified by celebrity on television. That outsider profile – beyond the Washington “swamp” – is one reason why he won in 2016, amid widespread popular disillusionment in politics. And, yes, he has tested the boundaries of presidential power, whether in trying to restrict immigration, bar entry to nationals from certain countries, appoint judges to his liking, persuade Ukraine to investigate a rival’s son (for which he was impeached), pursue a trade war with China, or even, at the start, mend fences with Russia.

What is at least as striking as how Trump has pushed at the constitutional boundaries, however, is how robustly the US constitution has stood up to a president who so patently does not fit the standard mould, at least for modern times. Several of his decisions – beginning with one of the first, on barring entry to nationals of Muslim-majority nations – have been overturned by Supreme Court. His response has been not to defy those rulings, but either to abandon the measure or to adapt it according to the law and try again. His latest decision – to send federal agents to certain restive cities – could well be open to legal challenge from the states.

This is not to say that Trump will be judged a good president or, as his many detractors already insist, among the worst. It is rather to note that, where and when he has challenged the law and lost, he has bowed to the ruling – which is why, if he loses the election, he will accept defeat. It is true that Trump’s presidency has been disruptive in many ways, but it is no bad thing for a constitutional democracy to be put through its paces from time to time.

It is to the credit of a constitution that has been on the books little changed for more than 200 years that it is emerging from the many predations of the Trump presidency unscathed.