Democracy 2024: Everyone Needs to Chill

Tuesday will mark the end of an unprecedented election campaign. The 2024 election season has been long, volatile and exhausting to Americans (such as myself and many of my peers) who, with great self-sacrifice and almost masochistic mercilessness have subjected themselves to watching it for two long years. Two. Years.

In that time, we have been treated to a blitz of story after story, each fading faster into the oblivion of our collective subconscious. Former President Donald Trump was indicted, four times, then there were the rather anticlimactic primaries, followed by Trump’s New York conviction, President Joe Biden’s meltdown on national television and withdrawal from the race, the meteoric rise of Vice President Kamala Harris, two assassination attempts against Trump and the usual smattering of media feeding frenzies in response to off-color remarks by various public figures.

These are only the highlights; the minor stories include the fall of a speaker of the House, the impeachment of a cabinet secretary and a short-lived third-party candidacy by the obscure anti-vaxxer son of a popular politician of the 60s. Throw in an MIA president and two major global conflicts, and you have a recipe for an entertaining Netflix series a couple of decades down the line.

Any of these stories, which alone would’ve transfixed the nation, commanded the attention of the American people for mere days before the next began. The unremitting deluge has been a true baptism by fire for most YU students, myself included, for whom this presidential election is the first in which we shall join our fellow citizens at the ballot box. The wearisome and worrying cascade of stories we’ve seen over the past years have concerned, frightened and disgusted many of us. I’m sure I’m not the only student at YU who has developed the bad habit of doom-scrolling the darkest depths of election Twitter as a counterproductive means of coping with every insignificant story.

In fact, we have no guarantee that this comedy of errors will even end this week, as results may take days to come in, and are sure to be met with constant legal challenges lasting until Inauguration Day.

For many young Americans, and even many older Americans, this election has inspired fear for our country, Constitution and democracy. Each party warns of the authoritarian tendencies of its opponents and cautions that this election could be the last conducted with a modicum of fairness and integrity.

While this fear-mongering on behalf of politicians is understandable, and I would be dishonest to assert that I have never felt occasional pangs of doubt myself, I fundamentally believe that it is misguided. Until now, we have been privileged to grow up in the most wonderful constitutional democracy on Earth and I fully expect that to continue regardless of this election’s outcome.

For one, people tend to underestimate the institutional checks that exist on any president of the United States. The constitutional structure of government, congressional procedures and the federalist preservation of state powers make it incredibly difficult for any president to exercise untrammeled control over the entire country.

As it stands, major legislation requires 60 votes to pass the Senate filibuster, and it seems highly unlikely that the Senate inaugurated in January will be in any mood to change this procedure. Plus, in the aftermath of recent Supreme Court rulings, judges will be in a more powerful position to challenge presidential attempts to circumvent the legislature through executive action. It is to be expected that state governments nationwide will rally to combat the agenda of any president inaugurated just as they have in the past.

I have no doubt that both Trump and Harris have a strong desire to exercise presidential power to its fullest extent. Nearly all presidents in history have wanted to. Both Trump and Harris have made promises to take actions that would dramatically change the balance of power in Washington, but both are likely to fall short, for the same reason so many recent presidents from Bush to Biden have failed in getting so many of their priorities passed. Very few presidents (perhaps only two) have truly changed the nature of American government.

Another factor often not taken into account is the history of America and democracy in general. In the annals of free government, tranquility is the exception, not the rule. President James Madison argued in Federalist 10 that abolishing faction can only be done through the destruction of liberty. The goal of constitutional government ought not be the abolition of faction, but merely fend against its most dangerous effects.

President Thomas Jefferson took it further, even being of the opinion that occasional political violence was healthy to the body politic. “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Even if we reject Jefferson’s radicalism (as we probably should), there is no question that democracy must be distinguished as the most fast-paced and turbulent form of government.

People often forget that in Jefferson’s own generation, Americans saw the wholescale replacement of the American government by an assembly of politicians in Philadelphia, several armed insurrections, the criminalization of criticizing the president, an election thrown to the House of Representatives and his own vice president mortally wounding a chief political rival before allegedly engaging in treason to surrender half of America’s territory to the Spanish.

American democracy has survived invasion, civil war, presidential assassinations, fears of communist revolution and instability in the 1960s that makes the decade since the golden escalator look like a tropical vacation. It has not survived all that only to be snuffed out by an admittedly heated showdown between a brash reality TV star with no filter and an inarticulate progressive back-up plan. Please, everyone, touch some grass.

This doesn’t mean we ought to be apathetic to the results of this election. As responsible citizens, it is incumbent upon us to evaluate the candidates for federal and local elections and come to an informed conclusion. We may even be quite passionate about our decisions (my friends know that I am). However, contentiousness is as natural to democracy as uniformity is to totalitarianism. We cannot claim to support liberty if we don’t willfully accept the occasional division and inflamed rhetoric that inevitably comes along with it.

We all ought to thank the Almighty for His great charity towards this blessed country before we mourn its imagined fall from His grace. Despite the disappointment half of us are sure to feel on Jan. 20, we ought not despair. Power, like all human things, is not forever. In America, it is never for more than four years.