by Danny Haiphong
The furor over Donald Trump’s “legitimacy” as president presumes that the U.S. system of rule is, itself, legitimate, at home and abroad. The Democrats maintain “a legitimate President certainly cannot have peaceful relations with Russia.” They are attempting to continue the momentum of the Obama period, which “has been the highest expression of the Democratic Party's transformation into the War Party and the most legitimate party of imperialism.”
What Constitutes a "Legitimate President" in the United States?
by Danny Haiphong
“The struggle to legitimize the US Presidency is ultimately a desperate attempt by the finance capitalist-aligned ruling class to stabilize the system with endless war.”
A recent piece authored by Robert Kuttner, the founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, laid out the criteria for a "legitimate" Presidency. The purpose for such criteria is given away by the piece's title, aptly named "Impeaching Trump." There currently exists a layer of the liberal section of the ruling class that is committed to ousting the President-elect from office. The danger in such a move does not necessarily reside from the elimination of Trump and his particular form of rule. What is dangerous about the effort to impeach Trump is the conflation of the genuine interests of oppressed and working class people with Kuttner's particular definition of Presidential legitimacy.
What defines a "legitimate President" of the United States according to Kuttner? The criteria of Presidential legitimacy are simple. The President must be anyone else but Donald J. Trump. Trump's unsettled business ventures mix "official duties with personal enrichment," which is deemed “illegal” under the US Constitution. And a legitimate President certainly cannot have peaceful relations with Russia. Trump's so-called ties to Russia are grounds for treason and enough to warrant impeachment.
Yet Kuttner’s argument for what constitutes a legitimate President rests on the assumption that the system of governance is legitimate in its own right. Yet the system of capitalism and imperialism in control of the US state apparatus has never been mired in a deeper crisis of legitimacy than the one currently in motion. Since Trump's election, establishment Democrats and Republicans have waged a multifaceted campaign of war against Russia in attempt to resolve the crisis. This campaign includes Kuttner's narrative that Russia meddled in US elections in favor of Trump as well as the vast NATO-sponsored military buildup in the Baltic States bordering Russia. The struggle to legitimize the US Presidency is ultimately a desperate attempt by the finance capitalist-aligned ruling class to stabilize the system with endless war.
“The President must be anyone else but Donald J. Trump.”
So the question must be posed again: What really constitutes a legitimate President of the United States? A "legitimate President" in the eyes of the ruling establishment is defined by a number of factors. "Legitimate" Presidents help consolidate and manage the crisis of imperialism in a manner that is palatable to the policy objectives of the ruling class. Such rule must also be effective in curbing the ideological and political development of the inevitable insurgency that arises from capitalist and racist oppression. Donald Trump's deviation from the ruling class on Syria and Russia as well as his public white supremacist worldview makes him an unsavory choice to govern a superpower that is circling the drain.
Perhaps the best example of a "legitimate" US President under imperialism is leaving office on January 20th. Barack Obama has consistently met all the criteria for what makes a President legitimate in the hearts and minds of the ruling class. Obama managed the crisis under terms that handsomely rewarded his capitalist masters. The "first Black President" worked diligently for Wall Street, transferring the most wealth to the top 1 percent from the rest of the population in US history. Obama achieved a new record for the most transfers of military weaponry to racist police forces that occupy Black American cities. He deployed US Special Forces to 70 percent of the world's nations, with a staggering 1600 percent increase in Special Operations Forces in Africa from 2006 until the present. These forces helped Obama drop over 26,000 bombs in 2016.
“Under Obama, imperialism's most egregious crimes found room to flourish.”
Obama was a gift to the imperialist system, which before his first term began was stuck in both political and economic turmoil. Under Obama, imperialism's most egregious crimes found room to flourish. Not one banker was punished for the economic collapse of 2007-08. In fact, trillions of dollars were sent to Wall Street's coffers while working class and oppressed people were left with an economy dominated by low-wage and contract jobs. The real unemployment rate sits at 23 percent as millions of people have gone uncounted by official unemployment statisticians. But imperialism had plenty of opportunity over this time to spend trillions militarizing the Russian border, funding and arming jihadists, and renovating the US nuclear arsenal.
Under Obama, the ruling class won and the people lost big. Yet despite this development, popular protest was relatively small in size and duration. The Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements brought police terror, white supremacy, and inequality back into the political discourse, but were unable to develop a solid organizational and ideological basis from which to win material victories. The anti-war movement was completely suppressed, and the LGBTQ and women's movements were consumed under the Democratic Party umbrella. All of this can be traced back to the "legitimate" Presidency of Barack Obama. His rule ensured that radical and revolutionary political alternatives would have no breathing room under the weight of political symbolism and neo-liberal dogma.
“It appears that no amount of information will stop the Democrats’ push for Trump to abandon his rhetorical gestures of peace with Russia and continue the dangerous war against Russia that began under Obama.”
Obama popularized oppression and exploitation among a large section of the electorate for the majority of his Administration. Workers and oppressed people struggled in disorganized silence. And even when popular protest ensued, few activists held Obama accountable for things like mass incarceration or the continued protection of the banks. The Obama period has been the highest expression of the Democratic Party's transformation into the War Party and the most legitimate party of imperialism. Trump's ascendancy has brought this reality out of the darkness and into the light.
Recent weeks have intensified the Democratic Party's rabid drive to become the most preferred imperialist political party in the United States. Hollywood millionaires such as Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks have lauded Obama's rule while taking ineffectual swipes at Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has moved forward in peddling the lie that Russia, Trump, and WikiLeaks worked together to meddle in the 2016 elections in favor of Trump. Numerous reports of Russian hacking have been discredited and the only intelligence report that exists on the subject contains zero detail on the specifics of Russia's so called hack job. But it appears that no amount of information will stop their push for Trump to abandon his rhetorical gestures of peace with Russia and continue the dangerous war against Russia that began under Obama.
“Donald Trump's deviation from the ruling class on Syria and Russia as well as his public white supremacist worldview makes him an unsavory choice to govern a superpower that is circling the drain.”
A recent piece on Obama by fellow admirer and corporate liberal Ta-Nahesi Coates exemplifies the danger of the current moment. While "progressives" obsess about Trump, pundits such as Coates have gone into overdrive to legitimize the Presidency of Barack Obama. The piece aggrandizes Obama and wishes him a warm farewell. Coates is unable to provide one example of how the Obama Presidency benefited the oppressed in a material way. The Democratic Party has been embarrassed by the rise of Trump yet the policies of Obama's two terms helped Trump take the White House. To hide their complicity, Democrats have sought to soil the insurgency of the coming period by defining themselves as the legitimate political leader of the oppressed. However, empty promises no longer get the job done so the Democrats have turned to all out war instead.
The definition of a "legitimate" President is dependent on the lens of the inquirer. If one looks through the lens of the ruling class, a legitimate President manages the crisis of the imperialist system of exploitation under relative terms of social peace. The expectation is that working class and oppressed people will continue to validate this definition in the name of American Exceptionalism. However, there has never been a US President that has genuinely governed in the interests of humanity. The imperialist state is an organ of class rule. It is organized to protect the interests of the capitalist class and suppress the interests of the working class and oppressed. The coming period holds much potential for the further development of radical insurgency. The effort by the Obama camp of the ruling class to legitimize the Presidential seat is nothing but an attempt to stifle the insurgency.
Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com
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