[The mob in Washington attempting
to disrupt the peaceful transition of American power also posed a threat to all
democracies.]
By Roger Cohen
And so the presidency of Donald
Trump draws to a close with a French leader obliged to declare his faith in the
resilience of American democracy, a remarkable development. Mr. Macron’s wider
point was clear enough: The mob of Trump loyalists in Washington attempting to
disrupt the peaceful transition of American power also posed a threat to all
democracies.
The reputation of the United States
may be tarnished, but its identification with the global defense of democracy
remains singular. So, when an angry horde, incited by President Trump himself,
was seen taking
over the Capitol, defiling its sacred chambers with swaggering contempt as
lawmakers gathered to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory,
the fragility of freedom felt palpable in Paris and across the world.
“A universal idea — that of ‘one
person, one vote’ — is undermined,” Mr. Macron said in an address that began in
French and ended in English. It was the “temple of American democracy” that had
been attacked.
The institutions of democracy
prevailed in the early hours of the following morning, but the images of mob
rule in Washington touched a particular nerve in fractured Western societies.
They have been confronted with the emergence of an illiberal authoritarian
model in Hungary and Poland, and the rise of rightist political forces from
Italy to Germany. They have also faced the truculence of leaders like President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has declared liberalism “obsolete,” or Xi
Jinping, China’s top leader, who has offered his country’s surveillance-state
model to the world as he crushed democratic protest in Hong Kong.
“For European societies, these were
shattering images,” said Jacques Rupnik, a political scientist. “Even if
America was no longer the beacon on a hill, it was still the pillar that sustained
European democracy and extended it eastward after the Cold War.”
Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany said she was “angry and sad.” She blamed Mr. Trump
unequivocally for the storming of the Capitol that left one woman dead. “Doubts
about the election outcome were stoked and created the atmosphere that made the
events of last night possible,” she said.
Germans, for whom the United States
was postwar savior, protector and liberal democratic model, have observed Mr.
Trump’s attempts to subvert the democratic process and rule of law with
particular dismay.
Their anxiety has been accentuated
in recent years because the fraying of democracy through polarization,
violence, social breakdown and economic hardship has not been confined to the
United States. The coronavirus pandemic has sharpened anxieties and mistrust of
government. In this context, the mob stampeding through the Capitol seemed to
reflect disruptive forces lurking in many parts of the Western world.
If it could happen at democracy’s
heart, it could happen anywhere.
Last year, as battles over racial
justice raged in several American cities, the German weekly magazine Der
Spiegel portrayed Mr. Trump in the Oval Office with a lighted match and called
him “Der Feuerteufel,” or literally, “The Fire Devil.”
The message was clear: The American
president was playing with fire. This could only stir German memories of the
Reichstag fire of 1933 that enabled Hitler and the Nazis to scrap the fragile
Weimar democracy that brought them to power.
Painful memory has not been
confined to Germany. Throughout much of Europe — a continent where totalitarian
rule is not some distant specter, but something people alive today have lived —
Mr. Trump’s attacks on an independent judiciary, a free press and the sanctity
of the ballot were long seen as ominous.
Ms. Merkel herself started life in
Communist East Germany. She has watched as the post-1989 euphoria over the
inevitability of a free democratic world has evaporated, deflated by the rise
of authoritarian governments. Mr. Trump, attacking foundations of that world
like NATO or the European Union, often appeared to want to tilt the world in
the same illiberal direction.
He has been defeated. American
institutions have withstood the mayhem. Mr. Biden’s victory was duly certified
by Congress once order was restored.
Vice President Mike Pence, whom Mr.
Trump had tried to enlist in his effort to overturn the November election
result, affirmed Mr. Biden as the winner. Mr. Trump issued a statement saying,
for the first time, that there will be “an orderly transition on January
20th.” Two
victories in Senate races in Georgia ensured that Democrats will
control the Senate, a stinging final rebuke to Mr. Trump that opens the way for
the new president to pursue his agenda.
So, all is well after all? Not
really. The American idea and American values — democracy, the rule of law, the
defense of human rights — have suffered a sustained assault during Mr. Trump’s
presidency. Mr. Rupnik suggested it would be “very difficult” for Mr. Biden to
project America as “the convener of a community of democracies,” an idea the
incoming administration has aired to signal a return to America’s core
principles.
For some time, the rest of the
world will look on the United States with skepticism when it seeks to promote
democratic values. The images of the overrun Capitol will be there, for those
who want to use them, to make the point that America would be best advised to
avoid giving lessons in the exercise of freedom. Dictators of the hard and soft
variety have new and potent ammunition.
“Democracy Fractured,” was the
banner headline in the French daily Le Figaro, above a photograph of the
Capitol under siege. An editorial suggested that Mr. Trump might have left
office with “a contested but not negligible balance sheet.” Instead, “his
narcissism having overcome any dignity, he manhandled institutions, trampled on
democracy, divided his own camp and ends his presidency in a ditch.”
There were signs that Mr. Trump’s
magnetism is already ebbing. The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babis, a
supporter of Mr. Trump, promptly changed his Twitter profile picture from one
showing him wearing a MAGA-style red baseball cap with the words ‘Silné Česko’
(Strong Czech Republic), to one that shows him wearing a face mask with the Czech
flag.
The Washington turmoil illustrated
in the end that the United States is bigger than one man, a point Mr. Macron
seemed intent on making. He alluded to joint American and French support for
freedom and democracy since the 18th century. He mentioned Alexis de
Tocqueville’s praise of American democracy. He spoke of American defense of
French freedom during two World Wars.
Mr. Macron’s message seemed clear.
The America of “We the People,” the America that held it self-evident at its
creation that “all men are created equal,” was still needed, and urgently, for
“our common struggle to ensure that our democracies emerge from this moment
that we are all living through even stronger.”
