Washington's legacy wanes under self-proclaimed 'greatest' president

Gordon L. Weil

On Monday, we celebrate George Washington's official birthday.

Each year on this occasion, I remind readers that Washington's Birthday is the legal U.S. and Maine government holiday. In remembering all presidents, some outright failures, the day meant to honor Washington has become "Presidents' Day," a commercial holiday.

Upon taking office as president, Washington realized that he would set precedents for his successors and have a deep impact on his country's political evolution.

The presidency had been designed for Washington, after he had turned down the opportunity to be the new American king. He was committed to the republican form of government in which the people, not the monarch, would be sovereign.

This new form of government existed nowhere else in the world and consequently, the American system of government was considered an "experiment." It still is.

Washington was its first leader, though the founders were wary of a president with powers to rival a king. Washington set out to limit the exercise of his authority, often deferring to congressional policy initiatives. He did not believe the Constitution gave him unlimited power.

He created the presidential cabinet and believed in executive privilege when it came to his communications with department heads. Still, he said that privilege did not apply in cases of impeachment.

President Washington put people who shared his views on the Supreme Court. Long after the opposition party led by Thomas Jefferson took control of the federal government, Washington's Federalist appointees dominated the Court.

Washington believed in “big government.” During the Revolutionary War, he had depended on voluntary state financial and military contributions. The experience made him a supporter of a strong national government.

He agreed with constitutional drafters who argued that the United States could only become a great nation if powers were transferred from the states to the federal government. He advocated the expansion of the government he led.

He faced strong opposition from those worried that the national government would override states’ rights and individual freedoms. Washington accepted the Bill of Rights as an essential part of the deal to make a new country.

Washington worried about the growth of political parties that he witnessed. He predicted “the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension ....” He concluded that strong partisanship could undermine the functioning of government.

In proposing an accord with the British, his former enemy, Washington subscribed to a view later formulated by a British statesman: "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests." Jefferson and his supporters disagreed, years later launching the disastrous War of 1812 against the British.

Jefferson attacked him openly. Though Washington would ultimately cut off contact with him, he refrained from any personal attacks on his fellow Virginian. Such values seem lost in today’s politics.

In a country populated mostly by white Protestants, he advocated equality for all groups. He even opposed the use of the word "tolerance," because it implied the superiority of one group over others.

Washington, a southern slave owner, agonized over slavery. He recognized that the country might break apart over the issue. If it did, a friend reported in 1795, "he had made up his mind to remove and be of the northern."

He believed that slavery would disappear as the nation's economy developed, though he was overly optimistic about its end. He recognized that the future lay in the development of wage labor in manufacturing, already beginning in the North.

Thus, 70 years before Lincoln's willingness to compromise on slavery to save the Union, Washington used his national standing to hold the country together. His will freed his slaves soon after his death, and, against Virginia law, he left money for their education.

He resigned as general, accepted no pay as president and declined to serve more than two terms. When Britain’s King George III, America’s old enemy, was told that Washington would walk away from high office, he said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

No American has ever enjoyed more prestige in his own lifetime than Washington. But he wore the mantel of power with modesty and showed great respect for the views of others.

Perhaps above all, Washington created the aura of the presidency. As chief of state as well as partisan head of government, he believed the president should try to represent all Americans and the national interest.

Since his time, most presidents have tried to retain that dual role. But his legacy wanes in bitter partisanship promoted by the self-proclaimed "greatest" president. Washington's successor next year may face the task of restoring the presidency itself.

Trump badly erred, but Senate lets voters decide on his removal

Gordon L. Weil

Words spoken by two Republican senators fairly summarize the impeachment experience.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska stated sadly, “Given the partisan nature of the impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, concluded, “Just because action met a standard of impeachment does not mean it is the best interest of the country to remove a president from office.”

The bottom line in the House was that impeachment was political.  By giving the impeachment power to the House and requiring only a simple majority, the founders well understood they were allowing for charges against the president that could be entirely partisan.

The situation is different in the Senate.  By requiring a two-thirds majority to convict, the Constitution almost mandated the agreement of members of both parties.  This requirement raises the level of the proceeding beyond simple partisan politics to an issue of the greatest national importance.

The House Democrats must have known that they could not get the Senate to convict Trump.  They may have calculated that by revealing his effort to get Ukraine to help his campaign, they would gain support in November. 

Their case suffered from being thin, based only on the withholding from Ukraine of desperately needed military aid in an effort to get its president to undermine Joe Biden, then Trump's most likely opponent.  The Democrats avoided obstruction of justice issues raised in the Mueller report or the emoluments clause, relating to his profiting from the presidency.

They tried to use the stark revelations by John Bolton, former national security advisor, of Trump's direct involvement to buttress their case, but he came forward too late.

Republican senators have become dependent on Trump's popularity and would not likely oppose him so close to an election.  The case was not flagrant enough to detach them from partisanship.

Trump has continually violated so many governmental norms that it was difficult for the Democrats to show his attempt to get political help from Ukraine was extraordinary enough to remove him from office.  To some degree, both Washington and voters had become accustomed to Trump's expansive tactics and frequent lies.

It was obvious that at least some GOP senators believe Trump is guilty of the charge made against him.  Despite their trial support, they cite technicalities to put distance between themselves and the president. 

Whatever he may claim, it is evident that Trump was not exonerated in the minds of a Senate majority.

Murkowski called his behavior "shameful and wrong."  Impeachment at least elevated the issue of foreign involvement in elections.  That alone may have been worth the effort.

Republicans claimed that the Democrats had always sought to reverse the 2016 election results and remove Trump from office.  That's an almost irrelevant argument, because an election cannot be reversed, Trump has been president for three years and the loss of the president is covered by electing a vice president as well.

 

Because both the House and Senate votes were almost purely political, the arguments for and against Trump, some bordering on the absurd, become less important in an historical context. 

Little has been done that is likely to have a lasting constitutional effect, any more than the Clinton impeachment did.  In perspective, Clinton looks purely political and almost nobody remembers the legal arguments.

The impeachment experience has educated some voters about the lengths of Trump's efforts to justify his 2016 upset win and use the 2020 election to confirm its validity.  The Democrats see his open willingness to accept foreign help in a U.S. election as a major negative that can be exploited to their advantage.

Trump's gamble, which he could win, is that voters appreciate the state of the economy, leading them to overlook his possible constitutional violation.  The GOP appears to believe that most people won't care about his Ukraine move.  It is possible many voters saw impeachment as political and boring.

With the benefit of hindsight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might have chosen to hold a vote of censure of the president.  Censure could have been voted by the House without requiring additional Senate action.  But it might have sparked a similar effort in the Senate, where only a 51-vote majority would be required, not the two-thirds needed for removal.

But a House vote of censure and a Senate attempt, successful or not, might have done as much politically for the Democrats as political impeachment-acquittal.  It would have also put pressure on GOP senators, like Susan Collins, who thought Trump had made a serious mistake, though insufficient for removal.

Tax cuts yield exploding Federal debt, Maine road decay

Gordon L. Weil

“You can pay me now or you can pay me later,” goes the saying.

When it comes to government budgets, if it's later, it must be Washington. If it's pay now, it's Maine.

The Congressional Budget Office, which is independent of both political parties, reported last week that the federal government will run deficits averaging $1.3 trillion dollars a year for the next ten years. That's not a typo – trillion dollars.

The government spends far more each year than it receives in revenues, mostly from taxes. Of each dollar Washington now spends, 22 cents is financed by borrowing.

Economists think governments can run up that kind of deficit when times are bad. Government becomes the major customer in the country and its spending helps restart economic activity. That's what happened ten years ago.

The economy got moving again, producing the longest sustained period of economic growth. But, instead of bringing down deficit spending, Congress cut taxes, reducing revenue, while jettisoning an earlier agreement to limit outlays.

Republicans have attacked Democrats for “tax and spend” policies. The Dems supposedly kept inventing new programs, paying for them with more taxes. The GOP say it wants to tax less and spend less.

But what has happened is even less economically responsible. Both parties are behind what amounts to “cut and spend.” Taxes have been cut as spending sharply increased. This approach is obviously aimed at pleasing voters, who get programs they like without paying for them.

Some economists even invented a justification for the policy. Piling on new debt was all right, so long as the economy kept growing. That way, the growth of the national debt could remain about the same share of the total economy over time.

The theory simply does not work, because the growth of the economy and of government spending are not as directly linked as expected.

The national debt is growing faster than the economy. By 2030, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts national debt will be at 98 percent of the total economy that year. In other words, it would take just about all of the national output to pay off the debt.

This is the ultimate “pay me later” approach. Eventually, the U.S. will have to deal with debt service payments that could swallow the underfunded federal budget. The only solution will be massive tax increases. The people who will pay the sharply higher taxes will include many who did not benefit from the spending spree.

In effect, it will amount to “you can pay me now or your children can pay me later.” That's current American budget policy.

In Maine, however, people pay now. Like almost all other states, it cannot run annual deficits, so the impact of borrowing must be covered by real revenues. If there are tax cuts, there will be borrowing cuts as well.

Gov. Paul LePage liked tax cuts, ensuring that insufficient revenue was raised to meet the cost of maintaining the state's roads and bridges. State funding for roads was essential for tapping matching federal funds.

His solution was to boost borrowing, but legislators, especially his fellow Republicans dislike increasing the state debt. Maine's public debt, equaling 12.66 per cent of the state's annual economy, is lower than in most other states.

LePage went so far as to oppose any increase in the 18 cents per gallon gas tax. In effect for a quarter of a century, it has not kept pace with the increasing costs of maintaining the roads.

The result is a network of roads and bridges that falls far below the standard of safety and comfort that Mainers should expect. Dangerous conditions may occur. But the best DOT can do is spread coating on many roads rather than maintaining them. Municipalities are told if they want better roads, they need to come up with some of the money.

LePage cut taxes. New bonding was slow and inadequate. With the prohibition of deficits, people get to pay now, not later. They pay daily in the form of badly maintained roads.

Borrowing, with its multi-year payoff, makes sense for roads and bridges that are used not only by the current population but well into the future. Later taxpayers get to use what they are funding.

But borrowing alone cannot be the solution. Its fate, subject to voter approval almost yearly, makes it difficult for DOT to have a long-term plan. Roads are an essential function of government, making reliable tax funding a reasonable way of supporting that function.

In the end, the issue of the public debt, either at the federal or state level, is a matter of taxes. If people oppose taxes now, they either pay the cost now in lost services or later when a higher tax bill must be paid.