Shared responsibility in restoring truth and trust, especially in election processes

A new president and vice president will be inaugurated in three days and regardless of how the current presidency ends, the Biden administration will take over the executive branch of the federal government with a full plate of problems including the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the challenges, recognized by the president-elect and others, is the tribal division tearing the nation and how to bring some unity. This is not a new problem, although it has been exasperated by President Donald Trump, and any degree of resolution depends on the good faith and efforts of all Americans – voters as well as leaders, Democrats, Independents and Republicans.

A most important aspect of the divisiveness is the prolonged attack on U.S. elections, with unfounded claims, by the president himself and his campaign people, of a stolen election, widespread voter fraud and improprieties in how votes were counted. Lies, lies, lies.

It’s now clear that high-ranking Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, played along with Trump’s lies far too long. Graham, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other nation Republicans now have some responsibility to restore faith in elections. That starts with telling the truth. The election was fair and properly conducted, with no evidence of wide-spread fraud. Joe Biden won, by popular and Electoral College votes.

MOB ASSAULT

The Electoral College certification by the Congress was interrupted on Jan. 6 by an assault on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob, incited by Trump. That is at the heart of a second impeachment of the president. Ten House Republicans, including Tom Rice of Myrtle Beach, were among the 232 members voting for impeachment.

“Once the violence began, when the Capitol was under siege, when the Capitol Police were being beaten and killed, and when the Vice President and the Congress were being locked down, the President was watching and tweeted about the Vice President’s lack of courage,” Rice said in a statement Wednesday after his vote.

“For hours while the riot continued, the President communicated only on Twitter and offered only weak requests for restraint. ... I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.”

Horry County Treasurer Angie Jones and Republican Party officials (Gerri McDaniel of the state executive committee and Shannon Grady, incoming president, Horry County Republican Women’s Caucus) were in Washington, at the Trump rally which became an assault. They were not part of the violent mob.

Jones told The Sun News, “It was like a festival … an opportunity to see the president and be in support of fair elections. … If I … could have anticipated anything happening, of course I would not [have gone].” Jones said she was not in Washington “in my capacity as Horry County treasurer.”

Jones, Grady and McDonald evidently believed Congressional Republicans could prevent certification of the 2020 election, the final, formal act in the election process, meaning they bought into Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. They are but three Horry County Republicans who believed, perhaps still believe, that Trump won.

A BIG LIE

Why? Partly because of Trump’s Big Lie that he won. Months before November, he claimed the only way he could lose was by fraud. If you lie often enough, about anything, some people believe the lie is truth, especially if you are the president. So who knows how many S.C. people who voted for Trump believe he won the national vote when he clearly, unequivocally, did not.

Court after court found no evidence of voting irregularities. Republican state officials, including Georgia’s secretary of state, stood up to Trump’s false claims. Some of those election officials have faced threats. After the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Graham managed to declare enough is enough and he was not among the 13 U.S. senators who voted against certification.

President Franklin Roosevelt said the presidency primarily is about moral leadership. FDR is one past president to whom Biden may look. We need leadership, too, from state and local leaders and individuals ‑ starting with acknowledging and telling the truth about the election of 2020.

“It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership,” Roosevelt said, in The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 11, 1932.