BURT HALL FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Rachel Knickmeyer / Flickr)The American people are deeply frustrated with not being fairly represented in Congress and with not having a voice in our democracy. They are demanding an end to our great political divide and a return to a working democracy. For years politicians have been well aware of these concerns and the need for the two parties to be civil and work together. And, they know that trust in government has been at an all time low. But the problem persists unabated.

Republicans now control all three branches of government, yet they haven't had an acceptable administration in nearly 30 years (since the Reagan/Bush era). They allowed a preventable 9/11 and two wars to occur, failed two terms in office, and constantly checkmated the other party's success while offering no solutions of their own. There is something fundamentally wrong in our democratic system and it has to be addressed.

Our great political divide began in a big way when, after owning the White House for 12 years, Republicans lost it unexpectedly to the Clinton presidency. They were outraged at the loss, considered his victory illegitimate and believed he had to be driven from office. The political environment that followed has continued to the present day and is best expressed byRepublican George Voinovich. After saving Cleveland from default as mayor and making Ohio number one as governor, he worked across the aisle during two terms in the Senate (winning all 88 Ohio counties) and always had the ear of the president. He confessed at Senate retirement that the attitude of his colleagues was "We're going to get what we want or the country can go to hell".

To get what they wanted, Republicans dishonored the integrity of the American ballot with two strategies. First, they dramatically changed their response to presidential elections from honoring the "people have spoken" to one of no presumption of legitimacy of an elected president. Second, Republicans limited voter participation of groups likely to vote Democratic and then diluted the voting power of those who did vote.

The Republican strategy of no presumption of legitimacy led to immediate refusals to accept presidential election results. In the case of President Clinton, baseless investigations and impeachment plagued his tenure and were employed in a failed coup to remove him from office. The vast majority of Americans, members of Congress, law professors and historians favored censuring Clinton for having lied under oath about a private affair -- a public reprimand.

Nevertheless, obsessed with impeachment, House Republican leaders railroaded it in a lame duck House session by blackmailing their members to get the necessary votes. House leaders knew Senate conviction was out of the question; their intent was to simply force Clinton to resign, as Nixon had done. He did not. The impeachment had nothing to do with Clinton's performance in office and it violated the U.S. Constitution.

The Republican strategy of Limited voter participation led to control of legislatures across the nation and in Washington and gave Republicans the power to obstruct presidents, gridlock legislation and shutdown government. They did so relentlessly during the Obama presidency. He was delegitimized and ruthlessly obstructed nonstop during his tenure in an attempt to force his presidency to fail. It did not. Among the many legislative obstructions were refusals to consider rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and reforming our immigration system – matters still unresolved today.

Both Clinton and Obama had been duly elected for two terms and weathered the storm. Historians now rank them near the top ten of all U.S. presidents. However, throughout their elected and reelected terms, the American people suffered from a destructive political environment during which much more could have been accomplished for them economically and otherwise. The first Republican administration to follow this destructive environment was the Bush/Cheney presidency and the second is the one we have now, the Trump presidency.

The attempts to nullify Clinton's presidency and related media frenzy led to the closest presidential election in history. The Supreme Court elected George W. Bush, by overstepping its judicial authority and stopping the Florida recount. Soon afterwards, two independent media recounts showed that the Supreme Court had elected the wrong president.

The Bush/Cheney Republican presidency did not maintain President Clinton's priorities on balanced budgets with surpluses or on responding to the gathering threat of international terrorism. Osama Bin Laden had already declared war on the United States and attacked us a few times, including a1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that failed. The terrorist leader was captured, prosecuted and jailed. Clinton responded to the rising threat by appointing a chief of counterterrorism to the White House who reported directly to him. They developed a series of anti-terrorism capabilities and a bold plan of attack to destroy Osama Bin Laden's network in Afghanistan. It was to be activated as soon as the FBI confirmed responsibility for the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer, USS Cole.

During transition, the Bush/Cheney White House was fully informed of the gravity of the terrorism threat and the network headed by Osama Bin Laden by President Clinton's national security team, the CIA Director, the White House chief of counter-terrorism and two separate U.S. national security commissions, one on terrorism and the other on threats of the 21st century. Nevertheless, the Bush/Cheney White House (1) let a CIA death warrant on Bin Laden lapse, refusing twice to renew it, (2) demoted the chief of counterterrorism who no longer reported to the President and (3) disregarded the Bin Laden bold attack plan although he was responsible for the USS Cole attack.

During the spring and summer that followed, the U.S. received extraordinary warnings from heads of state of England (twice), Jordan (twice) Russia ("in strongest possible terms ") and from intelligence agencies of other countries, such as the top ones of Germany and Israel. Warnings included the hijacking of U.S. aircraft for use as missiles and that twenty al-Qaeda members had slipped into the U.S., four of whom were training to fly. Israel gave us a terrorist list of persons residing in the U.S. and four of them were the actual hijackers. Other warnings reported the 9/11 code, "The Big Wedding" and Bin Laden's regret over failure of the first attack on the World Trade Center.

In June, The CIA Director informed the White House that "attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning …This is going to be a big one … of catastrophic proportions." In July, when there was still no response, the CIA Director made an emergency unannounced visit to the White House to present his case for a military response at that "very moment". Again there was no response -- no serious precautions taken, no rounding up of al-Qaeda agents reported to be in our country, no screening of flying schools and passenger lists, no locks put on cockpit doors and, most damaging of all, no warnings made to the American people as President Clinton had done with far lesser terrorism threats.

Following this 9/11 breach of national security, the White House recklessly responded with two unnecessary wars with no end in sight, while allowing Bin Laden to escape without pursuit. Neither of the wars were justified based on information known at that time. Cover-ups of these colossal errors in judgment followed and permitted reelection of the failed presidency for a second term. The Katrina disaster, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a plummeting stock market and huge job losses followed. Future historians will find it difficult to estimate the devastation done during these two Republican terms and perpetuated by shortfalls of the 9/11 Commission.

As to limiting voter participation, the votes of Democrats and Independents willing to leap voting hurdles erected by Republicans were rendered worthless by legislative boundaries drawn to elect only members of one party. Voters could no longer choose their elected officials; party officials had already done it for them. In general, those who might vote against their candidate were exported and those who were likely to favor their candidate were imported.

These distorted and discriminatory voting districts contributed to landslides in 9 out of every 10 House races in 2016. In 2017, they contributed to two special election Republican wins. For example, not even a strong Democrat candidate with a $39 million war chest could overcome the GOP engineered map for Georgia's sixth district. It has been safe for 21 straight elections (The Secret Behind Latest Democratic Losses, Hedrick Smith). Among other things, this unconstitutional practice offers candidates safe seats and freedom to be totally partisan. And, it discourages competition from worthy candidates of the other party. While both parties do this, Republicans did it four times as much as Democrats using a very effective high-tech computer-aided method.

It is clearly unconstitutional to rig voting systems for personal and partisan gain of the political party in power. At the state level, illegal districts with legislative majorities permit passage of unconstitutional bills, such as voter suppression and discriminatory bills that hurt everyday Americans. And, their majorities safeguard the illegal districts – a catch 22. At the federal level, illegal districts permit House members to obstruct a president of the other party or, when their party owns the White House, the passage of bad legislation, such as the recent healthcare bills.

Now, our two-party system is broken and too divided for any president to govern and we are living in an entirely different world today because of it. Our worldwide admired democracy has been abandoned. And, unless civility returns to our politics, we are heading for a national crisis of unknown proportions.

Is it right for Republicans to interfere with our elections, but wrong for Russia to do it? Is Russian hacking worst than voter suppression and partisan drawn maps diluting power of those who do vote? Do Republicans have some special privilege to interfere with American elections that outsiders don't have? Do we need protection from both? A cartoon in the Richmond Times Dispatch said "What makes you think the Russians can do a better job of undermining our democracy than we can?"

Trump is just a symptom of our unraveling democracy. We must deal with the underlying problems or symptoms will surface again in different ways in future elections. Any hope of restoring our democracy and revitalizing the Democratic Party must begin with a clear recognition of how bad things are today and holding public officials accountable for their mishandling of government affairs. Only when confronted with this accountability will Republicans reform their win–at-any-cost political strategies and one day regain the trust of the American people.

Overall, the mission of the Democratic Party should be to turn our politics around to the better days of the last century when our country was mostly unified and exceptional. The Democratic Party must figure out what it stands for in our democracy. Otherwise, it can't win anything.

The aim of a Democratic message and strategy should be to (1) address reforms of our electoral system so that members of Congress will be elected to provide fair representation in accordance with our Constitution and (2) protect the public against further interference with our political system, whether foreign or domestic. The message must direct a change in culture of the Congress to the successful bipartisan one of earlier decades, promote youthful Democratic leadership and encourage return of disappearing Republican moderates that contributed so much to our exceptionalism of the past century.

A truly participatory democracy will lead to overwhelming grass roots support and resources to assist in upcoming elections. Otherwise history will simply repeat itself. Democrats must correct the corrupt political system that stole their power and Supreme Court seat and hold public officials accountable for mishandling government affairs. Until Republicans begin to accept responsibility for their misconduct, they will not be ready or entitled to serve in office. In the end, the people deserve the working democracy our founders gave us, not the one we have today.

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After private industry careers, Burt Hall joined the General Accountability Office where he reached the level of group director analyst on national security matters reporting to and testifying before Congress. Twice he was loaned for two years, once to a bipartisan congressional commission and later to the Reagan White House. He is a WW II veteran and graduate of the Harvard Management Program. He has authored several books including the one on which this article is based, The Right-Wing Threat to Democracy, the Undoing of America's Exceptionalism.