Story highlights Kate Maltby: For Europeans, Trump's firing of Comey is proof even American democracy isn't immune from authoritarianism

Checks and balances only exist when separate parties control the executive and legislature, writes Maltby

Kate Maltby is a regular broadcaster and columnist in the United Kingdom. She writes a weekly column on politics and culture for The Financial Times and is a theater critic for The Times of London. She was on the founding team behind the reform conservative think tank Bright Blue and is also completing a Ph.D. in renaissance literature. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) Eight years ago, early in the Obama presidency, I was sitting with a group of conservative students in the cafeteria of a liberal Ivy League college. I was the only non-American among them. One of the campus liberals approached us to pick a fight: She was agitating for the new Democratic administration to pursue a case for war crimes against former President George W. Bush.

My GOP cronies bridled. "This is America," one insisted. "When one side gets into power, they let the other side retire quietly -- they don't stick their predecessors' heads on spikes. We don't use the law as a tool to punish political opponents. That's what makes us different from banana republics in Africa. That's what makes us the greatest democracy in the world."

Kate Maltby

Regardless of what you think about George W. Bush -- or this characterization of the entire African continent -- my friend summed up what many Americans believe about their nation's strengths. From Thomas Jefferson onward, the rhetoric of the democratic example has been fundamental to the mythology of American exceptionalism.

Central to this reverence is the faith Americans have in their Constitution: a document which promises to punish corrupt representatives, constrain executive overreach and protect judicial independence. But beyond America's borders, even its greatest admirers reserve a dose of skepticism. America's confidence that its Constitution uniquely protects against abuse of power feels, at best, naïve.

For those of us who split our lives between America and Europe, the series of scandals now emanating from the Trump White House will prove the true test of whether American checks and balances are all they promise. Our European friends are doubtful. No nation is exempt from the risk of an authoritarian coup. The clear feeling in Europe today is that America is, as Sen. Brian Schatz recently tweeted , "in a full-fledged constitutional crisis."