Romney and others speak out, but too little, too late to be forgiven

At least a few Republican politicians and officeholders have fessed up to the role of their party and its leader in undermining American democracy. I doubt very much whether they give a hoot if I forgive them or not for their role in creating the problem in the first place. Still, I've been thinking about whether I should.

My reflections were prompted by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney who has been reaping praise recently for pointing out the obvious: "A very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution." The 2012 GOP nominee is often lauded as a man of principle, especially for his votes to convict former President Donald Trump in two impeachment trials. For years, though, Romney was more than willing to accept the support of extremists in his party to further policy goals. As Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says, "It's good to see Romney speaking up now, but the party he's criticizing is in large part a monster that people like him helped create." Moreover, I suspect Romney's statement would have carried more weight if he had made it before he decided not to run for reelection and if it weren't being used to publicize his biography coming out next month.

Romney is not the only prominent Republican whose support for democracy and the rule of law came too little, too late. Trump national security adviser John Bolton wrote that former President Trump had indeed committed the high crimes and misdemeanors necessary for impeachment. Among them was the threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine if that nation did not launch an investigation into Joe Biden. Bolton refused to speak out when conviction of Trump in the Senate was possible. He only made the accusation in a book published in time to become a bestseller but too late to have much effect on Trump's standing.

Here's another example. In the days just after the 2020 presidential election, Trump Attorney General William Barr seemed to support his boss' accusations of election irregularities when he tasked prosecutors with looking into the empty claims. The head of the Election Crimes Branch of the Justice Department resigned in protest. Two years later in testimony before the House of Representatives Jan. 6 committee, Barr said the claims made by Trump were "bogus" and "bull----."

Admittedly, obtaining my forgiveness isn't worth much to Romney, Bolton or Barr, but what would it take for them to earn it?

When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV sought absolution from the pope in 1077, he put on a hair shirt and waited outside the papal residence at Canossa for three days in a snowstorm. Tempting though it may be to set the bar there, I'm not requiring frostbite and itchy clothes to concede forgiveness for GOP bigwigs. But I still would like to find a workable standard.

The Middle Ages do offer another possibility. Maimonides, the great philosopher and physician to Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, lived a century after Henry IV. What Maimonides wanted to see for forgiveness was stopping wrongdoing, confessing the improper action, regretting the action and determining not to repeat it.

Wouldn't it be great if Romney, Bolton and Barr had followed Maimonides' advice? But they expressed little sorrow and certainly no apology for failing to take action to protect democracy and the constitution sooner or more strongly.

Let's go back into history again, but not quite as far back as the Middle Ages. One of Trump's predecessors in the White House, Richard Nixon, said this about the Watergate break-in: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." No acknowledgment of improper action there. His counsel Charles Colson took another path. Pleading guilty for conspiring to cover up the break-in, Colson told a federal judge he'd been "an arrogant self-assured man in the ruthless exercise of power." He later reminisced, "My biggest regret is that I saw things going on that I should've known were wrong or I knew were wrong but then I rationalized them away. I didn't say anything. I should've spoken up a number of times and ... didn't." Colson spent seven months in federal prison and went on to found the Prison Fellowship, a nonprofit organization to support, teach and advocate for prisoners, former prisoners and their families.

Maimonides would assuredly say Colson deserves forgiveness. But what about GOP stalwarts such as Romney, Bolton and Barr? No way. By the time they spoke out, it was too little, too late.

© Creators, 2023