Americans have seen their presidents do a great many things after leaving office. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. John Quincy Adams returned to Congress — and served several terms. Years after leaving the White House, William Howard Taft even became the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
What we’ve never seen is a former president face a criminal indictment — that is, until late yesterday.
I found myself thinking about how these developments will be reflected in future history textbooks. “Well, students, the former president was accused of cheating on his third wife with a porn star, and then paying her illegal hush money, which he lied about, all as part of a scheme to win a national election. This ultimately led to criminal charges. It was an odd time in American history.”
But as the dust settles on the historic news, a New York Times analysis raised a provocative point this morning, characterizing Donald Trump’s indictment as a “test” for our democracy.
For all of the focus on the tawdry details of the case or its novel legal theory or its political impact, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world’s oldest democracy. For more than two centuries, presidents have been held on a pedestal, even the ones swathed in scandal, declared immune from prosecution while in office and, effectively, even afterward. No longer. That taboo has been broken. A new precedent has been set. Will it tear the country apart, as some feared about putting a former president on trial after Watergate? Will it be seen by many at home and abroad as victor’s justice akin to developing nations where former leaders are imprisoned by their successors? Or will it become a moment of reckoning, a sign that even someone who was once the most powerful person on the planet is not above the law?
These are perfectly sensible questions, and I can…
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