Ultimately, only the American people can decide whether the president is above the law. In the present circumstances, this question may seem like a purely partisan one. Those who like Trump will be tempted to view legal restraints on his power as a cumbersome nuisance. Those who dislike him will take the opposite view. All Americans, however, have a profound stake in preserving the “government of laws and not of men” passed down to us by previous generations.



The alternative is a system in which the president is “the only one that matters,” to quote Trump’s revealing self-description. That sort of despotism is just what the American founders fought a revolution to overthrow. It is also what many of our ancestors fled their home countries to escape.

Of course, special prosecutors are not the only actors in our constitutional system charged with safeguarding the rule of law. Many other institutions play important roles—or can do so, if they choose. These include Congress, the courts, and even the federal bureaucracy. But these institutions are not self-activating. If they are to perform their intended function, the people need some kind of early warning system, so they know when to press their elected representatives and other institutional checks into action. Special prosecutors can play this role very effectively, but they require popular—and, to at least some extent, bipartisan—support.

This might seem like an impossibly tall order in today’s polarized political climate, but there is a close historical precedent. In 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected by what was then the largest popular vote margin in American history. He won 18 million more votes than George McGovern and began his second term with an approval rating of 67 percent. Yet when Nixon fired the first Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in October 1973, the public reaction was so swift and ferocious that Nixon was forced to appoint another genuinely independent special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, within a week.

It was Jaworski’s investigation that ultimately forced Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. By that time, Nixon’s public approval had fallen to 24 percent. In other words, tens of millions of Nixon voters had changed their minds about him because of the evidence unearthed by the Watergate special prosecutors. What has happened before can happen again.

Whether Trump pays a similar price for ousting Sessions will go a long way toward determining Mueller’s fate. In the end, it is up to the American people, who will get the democracy they deserve.