There is no unity in presidential immunity

If people in power are deemed above the law, what are we looking at now? (John M. Lund Photography/Getty image)

President Joe Biden suspended his campaign for re-election in a call to unite his party, and the country. The Republican candidate also called for national unity. They have very different ideas about what that unity is. 

In a country as big and diverse — in every way — as the United States is, what can realistically hold us together? 

A common heritage and genetic legacy? Not in our history. We are a nation of immigrants, built by those who came here from other places, some unwillingly. There are nearly 1,500 different races and ethnicities in the U.S., currently, and the descendants of the original inhabitants of America make up about 3% of our citizenry. 

Obedience to a leader? Not in our blood at all. This nation was born in a convulsion of resistance to an unjust ruler. Civil disobedience in support of the redress of grievances has been a part of our political culture ever since. 

Shared religious beliefs? Not this either. There are more than 370 religious bodies within the United States. Some closely related, and some quite different from each other. And besides, it is in our founding documents that we will tolerate them all. 

So what, then, has held us together for coming on to 250 years? And what might continue to do so? I will argue, strenuously, that it is a devotion to our individual, inalienable rights, and an agreement that we all live within a system of laws which we have a role, through our democratically elected legislature, in creating. Both related principles are spelled out in our Constitution.  

The attempted assassination of a presidential candidate was an unsettling event. But some of the responses were equally disturbing. Several Republican elected officials blamed the shooting on the sitting president, and a Georgia congressman tweeted: “Joe Biden sent the orders,.” then added, “ The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges…” 

There is something here that appears to be rank hypocrisy. Their party leader, the former president, claims immunity for otherwise criminal acts taken while in office. The Supreme Court (I also have a bone to pick with them) was close enough to agreeing to this in their recent decision that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her angry dissent, wrote, “When he uses his official powers in any way… he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”  

So, even if President Biden caused this assassination attempt, he would be immune. Spoiler alert: He definitely did not. 

But it is not actually hypocrisy at work here. It is something worse. 

An idea that the law exists not independently in service of justice for all, but rather as a tool for those in power, has long been part of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric. It is not an academic concern; Trump and his proxies regularly suggest he will have “his” formerly independent justice department prosecute President Biden, Liz Cheney, members of the media, and others who have opposed him. And his followers accept this. Thinking, perhaps, “when we support our leader, we should be immune from the law. Those who resist us should be punished.” 

Not hypocritical, just a different way of looking at our legal system. 

This view literally knocks the blocks out from under the twin pillars of our shared Americanness. It diminishes our rights, and turns our system of government away from “by the people, for the people,” into something that puts those in power above the law. 

In contrast, Kamala Harris, now running for president, not only commits herself to the rule of law and the Constitution, but has spent a career upholding the law, and not bending or breaking it. This difference is not simply a choice and a preference, but rather something more foundational. Something that we in Rhode Island have understood over the past few hundred years — we were founded on ideas of individual rights, and were the first American colony to codify those rights in law. 

Without our shared adherence to the principles in our founding documents, whose words are salted throughout this piece, I am not sure that anything holds us together. Creating that chaos, and replacing it with blind loyalty, or a forced religious or ethnic conformity, may be what some in the Republican world are dreaming of. 

I cannot think of anything less American than that.