Truth and Consequences

Key Takeaways

• Leaders owe the people the truth.
• The divide in politics is between reality and delusion, not liberal and conservative.
• In the political world, decisions based on delusions lead to disaster.

As Joe Biden begins his presidency and we close the book on the Trump years, speculation has turned to the future of American politics and the Republican Party. Maybe Trump retains his hold on the Republican Party (the rest of the country has rendered its verdict), or maybe Republicans develop a convenient amnesia and the country, as we often have, just moves on.

Whether Trump stays relevant, though, is less important than whether or not we can overcome the real divide in American politics: the gap between reality and delusions. The only way we can reach unity or bipartisan consensus is if leaders in both parties fight misinformation. This means they must be willing to take on (and maybe even punish) members of their own party who insist on peddling delusions to voters.

A delusion makes for a lousy business model. The lesson of the Trump presidency is that it also makes for lousy governance. In the end, reality intrudes and cannot be spun away. Indeed, the recent violence at the Capitol is a direct result of deluded political rhetoric.

Trump told many lies as president, but none were weirder or more emblematic of his presidency than his lies surrounding election certification. Congressional certification of the electoral college is usually a non-event. It is a ceremony, with some occasional Congressional grandstanding, that does not affect the outcome.

But Trump became convinced that Vice-President Pence had the power to decide to throw out the electoral votes of states Trump lost. He repeatedly encouraged Pence to exercise that power — and then excoriated him when Pence did not act on his behalf. A violent mob of Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election. In addition to hunting for members of Congress, the crowd tried to find Pence so that it could lynch him in retribution.

The violence is horrific, of course, but I would like to focus on the absurdity of January 6: The vice-president does not have any authority by statute or under the Constitution to unilaterally decide an election. His role in certification is to open envelopes, announce the count and chair the meeting. The lynch mob that descended on the Capitol was angry because Pence did not do a thing that he does not have the power to do.

As a political scientist, I have found the post-election months bizarre. In reality, once the states certified results there was no legal way to overturn the election. All of Trump’s efforts (recounts, audits, lawsuits, blocking certification) were doomed. The last-ditch effort to blame Pence made no sense at all.

But it does make sense in the context of the last four years. If you look at the failures of the Trump administration you almost always find dishonesty, often absurdity. Whether it was the large scale disasters like its response to the epidemic or trivial things like Sharpiegate, there was a consistent pattern where President Trump made something up, everyone else scrambled in response and disaster often ensued. The January 6 riot is just the latest example.

Unfortunately, it is not just Trump. Un-reality has pervaded our public discourse in ways that have crippled public policy. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic Ohio Governor Mike DeWine received praise from most observers (including this one) for his handling of the pandemic. Since then, he has been besieged by members of his own party (taking their cues from Trump) who have driven out his director of public health and looked for ways to limit his power on public health issues. In undermining DeWine, Republican leaders influenced Republican voters because partisans take cues from their leaders. As a result, the governor has struggled to get Republican voters to take the epidemic seriously. The consequences have been deadly.

To his credit, DeWine has not bowed to these forces and tried to fight misinformation on the epidemic. Politicians often have trouble speaking truth to voters if it is truth they do not wish to hear because it endangers their elected positions. But, as the last year has shown, ignoring reality creates disasters. The difficult ongoing task for political leaders moving forward will be recentering truth in public discourse.

To do so, political leaders must not only speak the truth but be willing to call out those who do not and punish them for their bad-faith representations. This task is made harder in a system like ours, where party leaders cannot simply dictate to their members. However, politicians can take steps to marginalize members who peddle delusions by stripping them of committee assignments, withholding campaign funds (corporate America is ahead of politicians in this regard) or even expelling members of Congress who will not operate in reality.

In his inaugural address, President Biden called for unity, and that unity is possible. The divisions between liberals and conservatives are manageable. Honest liberals and conservatives can (and should!) disagree but can (and should!) come to reasonable compromises on public policy. However, there is no reasonable bipartisan consensus between reality and delusions.

Policies and politicians soaked in delusions are not compromise solutions. The “unity” political leaders should seek must be a unity based on science, facts and a shared reality. Anything else is just a disaster waiting to happen.

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