“For better or worse, the strange forces at work will continue to erode the foundations on which British and American politics are built.”

David Eastwood, Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, writes for The Conversation:

Two years ago, a Trump Presidency and a vote for Brexit were considered all but unthinkable. Now, two of the world’s oldest democracies are struggling to live with them, and their struggles are even more profound than they seem. The depth of these crises is masked by what might be termed “mere politics”: beneath the dissonance of day-to-day politicking, the constitutions of two representative democracies are being fundamentally challenged.

Americans talk much, but understand less, about their “Founding Fathers”. The US’s constitutional settlement was essentially forged between 1776 and 1794, and it envisaged a very different political culture from that which now prevails. Its points of reference were classical, senatorial, discursive, and balanced. At its core was a simple premise: with the right people debating the right issues in the right way, checked by a constitution that balanced the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, the Founding Fathers believed they would create a virtuous Republic.

It is reported that Trump might not have read all the articles of the constitution, still less its 27 amendments (though he ominously invoked the second – the right to keep and bear arms – on the campaign trail). No matter, because America is trying to accommodate itself to a style of government quite different from that envisioned by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the constitution and its processes.

Government now is government by opinion – opinion expressed not in the glorious prose of the Founding Fathers’ Federalist Papers, but in the peremptory and explosive sub-prose of tweets. It is the politics of expostulation, not consideration.

Given the White House’s well=chronicled and sometimes almost comical dysfunction, not to mention the constant drip of allegations that might have sunk presidencies past, one wonders how this presidential vessel is still afloat. What’s protected Trump so far is a curious elision of a new mode of politics and a venerable political structure.

The checks and balances of the US constitution that were designed to prevent the abuse of power now themselves check one another. With the same party controlling Congress and the White House – and nominating justices to the Supreme Court – the wheels of the constitutional machine turn slowly. All the while, the judicial wing of the constitutional machinery is playing its part too via Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump team’s Russian ties, steadily accumulating evidence, cutting deals, and selectively releasing information into the public domain. Even with Trump yet to be interviewed for the inquiry, much of what’s already come out would have been much more immediately and more obviously fatal to presidencies past.

Here Trump is protected by both prosecutorial protocols and the disabling pluralism of social media. The reality is that everyone can now pick and choose their own news. Whereas the fallout from Watergate was a classic example of the “fourth estate” forcing accountability to a public opinion that it helped to shape, the new world of social media means presidential tweets can deflect, dispute, and flagrantly deny to remarkable effect.

If Trump’s endurance up until this point demonstrates anything, it may be that the US’s constitutional settlement was simply not designed for such times. And if the constitutional crisis in the US is acute, the crisis in the UK might yet prove more profound.