What's Most Important
What's Most Important
Can we preserve our democracy?
The President of the United States has a lot of responsibilities, including that “ . . . he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . .” as required by Article II of the Constitution. The to-do list is long and demanding, and there are significant long term ramifications from nearly everything the President does.
He’s required to manage:
Immigration
The economy
Safeguarding our democracy
Transportation, like rail and air safety and highways
The health and welfare of the American people …
…
You get the idea.
But which job of the President is most important? The sine qua non. The one for which all others can be made to take a number and stand in line. As critically important as it is, even in this age of grift, fraud, treason, insurrection and more, it isn’t justice. Even as the cost of groceries is frustratingly high, it isn’t the economy. Our immigration system has been universally pilloried for decades, as Congresses have steadfastly refused to do anything to improve the situation. That has left us with the chaos we see every day. But even fixing that isn’t the most important duty of the President.
The most critical task of the President of the United States is national security. Protecting us from bad guys who would do us harm must take precedence, because if we are at risk of foreign attack, none of the other issues will matter.
The task is never ending. There is no box to check and then say “next.” On December 8, 1941 it was obvious and easy to identify what needed to be done. But such clarity is exceedingly rare. National security is most often devilishly complicated.
For example, consider the Ukraine war. In 2004 when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine in an effort to destroy that country and to make it part of Russia, it wasn’t obvious that we had a dog in that fight. But it quickly became clear that Putin’s genocidal war crimes adventure has consequences that can impact us.
It’s plain to see that this former KGB tough guy is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union. That puts our NATO allies at risk, and that means that war would be at our doorstep if Putin succeeds in Ukraine and then starts after our friends. He’s already suggested that annexing the Baltic states might be next. Maybe eastern Poland, too. Article V of the NATO charter would pull us into the conflict and our national security would be immediately compromised. That electric shock up your spine just now is you recognizing how close we may be to World War III. Prof. Heather Cox Richardson has more on this here.
That’s why national security is job one, and why it is devilishly complicated. But let’s look at this situation just a bit more.
It’s well established that Putin kills his critics and political opponents, so it’s little surprise that he murdered Alexei Navalny. On the other hand, Putin had him tried and convicted on trumped up charges and sent him to a gulag in the Siberian Arctic and held there in solitary confinement. There was little Navalny could do to Putin from there. So why bother killing him? Here’s my theory.
Putin is an incrementalist. He pushes the envelope, finds that he can get away with something and then pushes some more. Ukraine is a perfect example.
After annexing the eastern section of Ukraine and the Crimea in 2014, he stopped there, waiting for world reaction. All he got were blabbers blabbing. No one came to the rescue of the Ukrainians to push Putin back, so in 2022 he went after the entire country. That’s incrementalism. And it is a threat to democracy.
He didn’t get away with that recent invasion yet, but he may be in position to do so. Too many in Congress are refusing further funding to help Ukraine. These Representatives seem content to leave the Ukrainian fighters running out of munitions. They just ceded the bombed out city of Avdiivkak to the Russians, giving them a major win and a retreat for the Ukrainian forces.
That kind of battlefield advance caused Putin to push the envelope in a different direction, so he had Navalny murdered. Now Navalny is out of his way permanently.
Steve Schmidt wrote of Navalny:
One day, his name will be known in the same breath as Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill, Lafayette and Lincoln around the world. One day, when Russia is free, Alexei Navalny will be exalted. Today, he is simply dead, murdered for demanding that each individual human has a right to live in freedom.
Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic:
Only minutes after his death was announced, I spoke with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader. “We are worried for our people too,” she told me. If Putin can kill Navalny with impunity, then dictators elsewhere might feel empowered to kill other brave people.
More incrementalism.
Now the world is howling, including freedom loving Russians, but my guess is that the howling will slowly quiet, and Putin will have gotten away with his crime. The envelope will have been permanently expanded.
That devilishly complicated national security task which comes above and before all others becomes not just more difficult, but more likely murderous when our own team is in constant conflict with itself, undermining our efforts and our options. It used to be that our political differences stopped at the water’s edge. We came together as one to protect and defend our country. Now that imperative has been betrayed, over-laid by petty self-interest and the infestation of cowards. Now some within the US are siding with Putin.
We have elections coming up. Many candidates will thump their chests and proclaim what true Americans they are. They will tell you that their opponent is a weenie, soft on immigration, wanting open borders and willing to let our blood be poisoned by “others.” Some look like enemies of our country because they are look like cowards, traitors to our Founders and our Constitution and violators of their oath of office, regardless of the holy verbiage they quote.
Vote for the other candidates. The ones who have demonstrated that they will go to the Congress or their state capitol to fight for America, to honor their oath of office and to demand justice everywhere. Vote for the candidates who believe in this America, not some dreadful replica of the murderous nation led by Vladimir Putin.
That’s what’s most important for us to do. Because that will enable us to preserve our democracy.
Post submitted by Jack Altschuler
Jack Altschuler is a politics geek, an engaged, impassioned citizen, and an observer of the often amusing, periodically hopeful and sometimes crazy human condition. Having spent decades in industry and having delivered hundreds of keynote speeches and leadership workshops, he has seen many of the wacky things people do. His favorite question is, “Why would someone do that?” That is to say, he does his best to resist knee-jerk reactions to the lunacy of human behavior – especially in our national politics – and instead looks to see what is behind the obvious. He publishes JaxPolitix which is designed to be a public forum for discussing the important issues of the day. Each Disambiguation article contains an invitation into conversation and your contributions are specifically requested.
Note: The views and opinions expressed by volunteer contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of The Union, a single-issue organization that welcomes all and is dedicated to protecting democracy.
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An excellent post!