January 6th and America’s Ambivalence about Political Accountability
By P. Michael McKinley - July 12, 2022
The
January 6th Select Committee recently all but exonerated former Vice
President Mike Pence of responsibility for the events of that day by
praising him as a profile in courage because he certified the November
2020 elections. Not so fast. Pence was and remains among the voices
perpetuating the “big lie,” questioning the legitimacy of President Joe
Biden’s victory.
The committee is also in danger of undermining
the principle of broader political accountability for Jan. 6. Pence was
not alone in prevaricating. On the basis of former Mark Meadows’ aide
Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on June 28, and other publicly available
information, key White House aides who knew something was amiss and
Cabinet officials who considered invoking the 25th amendment to remove
then-President Donald Trump for incapacity did nothing to publicly alert
Americans to the danger their democracy faced.
Most of these
individuals are not being asked to appear before the committee, and they
remain largely silent. It was only on June 29, in the wake of
Hutchinson’s testimony, that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone
was subpoenaed to testify – off-camera. He reportedly threatened to
resign numerous times in the weeks before the insurrection but has not
explained why. Cipollone can testify to any criminal activity he may
have seen without breaking executive privilege. It remains to be seen if
he did during his closed door testimony on July 8.
These senior
officials with a public trust should not be treated as heroes or
concerned citizens because they had reservations at the time about the
efforts to overturn the election results and to select new state
electors. They did not act – not on Jan. 6, not in the weeks before the
insurrection, and not in the aftermath as the enormity of what had
occurred sank in. Some, like former Attorney General William Barr, who
authorized the Department of Justice to look into “vote tabulation
irregularities” – over the objections of the head of the Election Crimes
Branch who resigned instead – cooperated in the early stages of the
attempt to discredit election results. They are being given an
accountability pass.
Their actions may or may not be
prosecutable, but political accountability should be about more than
building court cases and establishing criminal liability. Not all
situations lend themselves to such an outcome. The evidence trail in the
Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandals did allow for convictions of
political figures; the path forward has been less clear for the events
of Jan. 6 but evidence is emerging that points in the same direction,
and as the Department of Justice prosecutes hundreds of individuals
involved in the assault on the Capitol.
An important study by the
non-partisan Protect Democracy Project lays out what broader political
accountability can look like for Jan. 6. It includes constructing “a
full record of wrongdoing; pursu[ing] deterrence through consequences
for wrongdoing; rebuild[ing] prescriptive norms of acceptable political
behavior; and generat[ing] shared narratives.” The corollary is that
doing so “can combat disinformation and . . . lay the political
groundwork for institutional reforms.”
This cannot happen if
accountability and responsibility are relativized – which is what is
happening across the American political spectrum. Politicized justices
on the Supreme Court camouflage an ideological power play as a
constitutional debate over the legality of abortion – normalized and
enabled by far too many critical commentators willing to argue the finer
points of the Roe v. Wade decision. Despite the recommendations by
legal experts and the Accountability 2021 project on the need for
reforms after the Trump years, the Biden administration acts as if
federal institutions have been restored by an election. Decapitation
videos and “hunting RINOs” campaign ads by congressional representatives
and candidates are mainstreamed as part of the political landscape
despite concerns about the increasing use of violent rhetoric in
political discourse. Congress and the White House play the gun safety
bill compromise as a breakthrough and are duly applauded as they
sidestep the Supreme Court undermining their efforts by overturning New
York’s ban on carrying concealed weapons. Since the murder of George
Floyd two years ago, the white supremacy replacement theory only seems
to gain in force, without the national headlines, and questionable law
enforcement shootings of unarmed Blacks continue – and continue to be
justified by police.
Pence’s rehabilitation is particularly
jarring. This is a politician who in March 2021, two months after
January 6th, perpetuated the falsehoods of doubt over the outcome of the
November 2020 election in an op-ed: “After an election marked by
significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials
setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of
Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.” He showed no
“courage” on Jan. 6, only the expediency of a politician who consulted
with numerous advisers before making the obvious decision that he could
not disrupt the election certification process without serious
consequences for him as well as the nation.
Indeed, to paint
Pence as an unwilling participant dragged into Trump’s scheme ignores
the fact that Pence himself can lay claim to being present at the
creation of disinformation efforts regarding election results. As early
as 2016 he was touting extensive voter registration fraud potentially
involving thousands of people in his home state of Indiana, although no
evidence was found to back the claims. In the aftermath of the 2016
presidential election, which Donald Trump won, Pence was named the
chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity
which, among other things, was meant to look into unsubstantiated
allegations that millions of undocumented citizens voted in the 2016
election – an allegation that Pence backed. In December 2020, as
vice-president, Pence openly supported the effort by Texas Attorney
General Ken Paxton to overturn election results in Georgia, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
As late as Jan. 2, 2021, four days
before the insurrection of Jan. 6, Pence through a spokesperson
supported the efforts by Senator Ted Cruz and ten other Republican
senators to oppose certification of the November 2020 elections until a
ten-day audit of results in the disputed states was completed. It is
hard not to draw the conclusion that Pence was playing both sides until
the very eve of Jan. 6. His tactical silence since his afore-mentioned
op-ed last year appears to be just that as he supports efforts in states
like Texas to restrict voting rights.
Accountability is about
the future as much as the past. As things stand now, Pence will escape
accountability for standing on the sidelines after the November 2020
election and for his silence after January 6th. In the meantime, he
helped create the environment for the Texas Republican Party platform,
which rejected the legitimacy of Biden’s election in June 2022. Across
the country, Republicans who opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the
elections, like Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, refuse to rule out
voting for the former president again in 2024. They in effect give Trump
and state legislatures and House members license to subvert the process
again. The debate in some circles over the wisdom of charging Trump
should the evidence warrant it also relativizes accountability; there
are no such qualms about charging the foot soldiers of Jan. 6. The
aforementioned “prescriptive norms of acceptable political behavior” are
being undermined.
The January 6th
committee may not be quite “blowing it,” to paraphrase David Brooks,
but absolving Mike Pence from accountability also plays into the
counter-narrative of a flawed election, and points towards a blurring of
the objective laid out by Representative Bennie Thompson, Chairman of
the January 6th Select Committee, of “a true accounting of what
happened, and what led to the attack on our Constitution and our
democracy.”
Washington, D.C., is a town with short memories, or
no memories. Most of the time it does not seem to matter in the sweep of
history. This time, American democracy, its institutions, and its
people will pay unless its collective inclination to amnesia about
historical events can be reversed, and meaningful accountability returns
to the political firmament.