The Sun King

President Trump explained in late August that he plans to “get rid of mail-in ballots.” He said he’ll start with an executive order ahead of the next election. “Remember the states are merely an ‘agent’ for the federal government in counting and tabulating the votes,” he wrote. “They must do what the federal government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, for the good of the country, to do.” He beamed that Vladimir Putin had informed him, only days earlier: “You can’t have an honest election with mail-in ballots.” Think our politics have changed? Just a smidge?

Historians and lawyers gave the quant, old-fashioned reply — Trump’s scheme is unconstitutional. Art. I, sec. 4 declares “the time, place and manner of holding elections shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof, but the Congress may, at any time, make or alter such Regulations.” No role for the president. Alexander Hamilton explained in “Federalist 59” that democracies must diversify the power to control elections to protect themselves from an overreaching authority. But then Hamilton never knew Trump.

And the Department of Homeland Security quickly announced that it may withhold millions of dollars designed for state election security and other law enforcement initiatives if locals don’t fall in line with Trump’s impermissible demand. We govern now by extortion, not Art. I. Just ask the universities, the law firms, the networks, the press, private corporations, foundations, researchers, our allies and trading partners, Ukraine. Why not the states? Tyranny embraces all. That’s the goal. That’s the theory.

I’ll admit, though, I was even more taken aback by President Trump’s declaration that all must submit to what the “federal government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, for the good of the country.” What a mouthful. It was enough to bring back the 17th century. The glorious Sun King. Louis XIV who (perhaps) said: “L’Etat, c’est moi!”. The Potentate of Mar-a Lago. Finally. Chief Justice John Roberts must be wicked proud.

Besides, who could be more trustworthy overseeing elections than the guy who demanded, on tape, that Georgia’s Secretary of State “find” nearly 12,000 votes to put him over the top in the 2020 election? And who better to assure the integrity of the democratic constitutional system than the leader who summoned thousands of violent insurrectionists to the Capitol to overthrow the United States government? And after the thugs had brutalized over a hundred valiant police men and women on the seditionist’s behalf, who pardoned their crimes in the savage cause.

This is the standard bearer, the beau ideal, the literal, unquestioned, not to be questioned, never to be questioned, messiah of the American Republican Party. The guy who reports: “A lot of people are saying, “Maybe we like a dictator.” The GOP is all in. Enthusiastically. To the hilt. Abraham Lincoln weeps. Joe McCarthy swoons.

One wonders what happens next.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.