Answer:
Explanation:
On one hand, American democracy seems in an undeniably rough state. Polarization has intensified. Misinformation and mistrust are rife. The divided public response to the evidence and testimony emerging from Jan. 6 committee hearings in Congress shows a lack of national consensus over a fundamental element of democratic life: the ability to conduct a peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to the next.
Analysts warn that the United States’ aging electoral systems have — through gerrymandering and other anti-democratic practices — increasingly started to yield outcomes that foster further tribalism, deepening the sense of zero-sum, winner-takes-all antagonism that runs through the body politic.
Where there is bipartisan unity, it’s in the mounting despair and pessimism felt by most Americans about their political status quo. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believe it’s “likely” that the United States will “cease to be a democracy in the future.” Two in 5 Americans, according to another study, would now support a military coup if they believed the circumstances justified such an intervention.
Yet the United States under President Biden can still appear to those elsewhere in the world as a bulwark of liberal democratic values. Many European officials have hailed the United States’ unique role in galvanizing Western governments to confront the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, by extension, defend the international order. Far beyond weapons transfers, the Biden administration sees its efforts as part of a broader struggle for liberalism and democracy around the world.
“America and all who share our values … must build on the unity that we have demonstrated in Ukraine to try to extend a broader revolution of dignity to people seeking to be free,” declared U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power in a speech last week.
The end of the road for American exceptionalism
That may even be a tall order at home, where all the talk is about democratic backsliding. No matter the outrage and inquiries that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the Republican Party as a whole appears to be doubling down on former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It’s pouring millions into new efforts in various states to recruit poll workers and watchers to spot irregularities and potentially challenge ballots and the legitimacy of certain votes.
As my colleagues reported, more than 100 GOP officials and politicians who won recent primaries appear to endorse Trump’s false fraud claims. “Many will hold positions with the power to interfere in the outcomes of future contests — to block the certification of election results, to change the rules around the awarding of their state’s electoral votes, or to acquiesce to litigation attempting to set aside the popular vote,” they wrote.
Americans are raised on a belief that their nation’s constitutional checks and balances safeguard their democracy. However, experts point to the underlying norms that help guarantee those safeguards. At a time of bitter polarization, those norms are eroding, with dire consequences.
