No, this election isn't the end of the world

If Donald Trump loses on November 8 by five points (about how much he is down in the polls right now), it would not be because of a rigged system, vote fraud, or a sinister globalist cabal operating from the shadows. He would lose because of his traits as a candidate and the choices of his campaign. Nor would his loss be the final nail in the coffin of the American republic. We would muddle through, as we always have. A Clinton presidency – especially if backed by a Democratic Congress – could take a toll on the nation and set back many hopes of limited government. But, with hope and prudence, the nation would persevere.

But there is a risk of radicalization for anti-Trump activists, too. If, by some surprising turn of events (though perhaps less strange than some of the other occurrences of this cycle), Donald Trump were elected president, the republic would not collapse. If Donald Trump could end the American republic and usher in a dictatorship, then the republic is already rotten to the core. Despite the fashionable inclination to adulate presidents, our nation still has checks and balances. The courts and, especially, Congress can still restrain the executive branch. A national dictatorship would be the sign of a systemic failure of our republican architecture – a problem that no single election could either cause or cure. (The anti-Trump Right has its own temptation of radicalizing backlash: throwing in with a leftist narrative of politics and arguing that what really ails conservatism and the GOP are “toxic masculinity” and other ideological chimeras in the menagerie of cultural Marxism. The flaws of Donald Trump do not excuse the surrender of deeper principles – a truth a variety of factions could learn from.)

The idea that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton could destroy the republic suggests an abysmal lack of faith in the foundations of our government. We’ve survived a Civil War, Nazi Germany, and the Cold War; the republic can certainly endure a bombastic reality-TV star or the most venal of Alinskyites. In a healthy republic, no man is indispensable for the survival of the nation. The leader with the greatest claim to indispensability in American history is George Washington, and his indispensability owes more to his willingness to surrender power than to any particular use of that power.