What Happens When a Tradition Dies?

Trump and Biden at last night's Presidential Debate

It’s way too early, as I write, to declare a winner in the first 2020 Presidential debate. Scholars, fact-checkers, and historians still need to comb the transcripts and put actual statements in context. As usually happens, the Internet echo chamber has essentially called victory for whomever most people supported going in; despite the “Undecided Voter” myth, most people’s votes change little. The only question is, will we vote this year?

Watching the overnight returns, I think we’ve uncovered a more important issue: our standards and expectations from presidential aspirants have changed. In advance, jokers flooded social media with debate “bingo cards” and rules for “drinking games,” but once it actually began, a consensus apparently emerged: neither the content nor the theatrics mattered. We simply became desperate for one candidate to say something, anything, to give the evening meaning.

Sociologist Duncan J. Watts once wrote something which has heavily influenced my subsequent thinking. Quoting the storied psychologist Stanley “Obedience to Authority” Milgram, Watts wrote: there’s two kinds of rules, those that are written down, and those that aren’t. Written rules have limits and parameters. You quickly learn when these rules don’t apply, when you can safely ignore them, and how to work around them without hurting anyone.

Former Vice President Joe Biden

Unwritten rules always apply.

The American Constitution, despite Americans’ love of talking about “Constitutional rights” and “Constitutional responsibilities,” doesn’t talk about freedoms much. It mostly describes how we’ll structure our government, the foundations for our bureaucracy, and how to federate authority over nominally independent states. Most of our Constitution reads like a short-form owner’s manual for a KitchenAid stand mixer, not a treatise on moral philosophy.

Much of American government depends on a pamphlet which, as amended, runs under 8000 words. That isn’t very much. The “government” we’ve grown accustomed to honoring, at least according to 11th-grade American Civics, depends on these brief few rules, written down explicitly and therefore difficult to ignore. But the largest portion of American civil society derives, like Watts says, from the unwritten rules. And we have hundreds of those.

Consider: although Alexander Hamilton wanted George Washington to remain President for life, Washington chose to voluntarily step down following his second term. Pop historians claim this established the tradition, validated by Thomas Jefferson, that Presidents serve a limited term, then relinquish power. This rule was written down nowhere; it simply had binding authority because everyone knew this was the rule. Until Franklin Roosevelt, that is.

After Roosevelt clinched an unprecedented fourth term, then died in office, we faced a chilling reality. Some wealthy Northeastern aristocrat, with delusions of superiority, could claim the Presidency for life and, with the willing connivance of voters, exercise wild executive authority. So the government swung into action. It passed the 22nd Amendment, formally limiting presidents to two terms; and the formerly unwritten rule became written.

Except, once written, it became negotiable. Discussions once considered unthinkable, suddenly became banal. President Reagan lobbied, albeit half-heartedly, for the 22nd Amendment’s repeal, while President Trump claims he’s “probably entitled” to a third term. Once the unwritten rule became written, it became acceptable to openly discuss ignoring all legal and moral precedent. Only once a rule is written, does it become acceptable to disregard it.

President Donald Trump

Until Donald Trump, we accepted that Presidents needed to demonstrate some baseline modicum of physical and mental fitness, public eloquence, and preparedness for the job. That’s the role served by presidential debates: showing off candidates’ ability to communicate under pressure, remain eloquent, and look presidential durning adverse circumstances. That’s been the unwritten rule, at least since Reagan talked circles around Carter.

In 2016, when a slovenly, sweaty, sniffing Trump still nevertheless prevailed over Clinton, the unwritten rule was demolished. Many of us reacted with natural horror, thunderstruck that the standards we’d long accepted were now trashed. Watts describes the physical symptoms of violating unwritten rules: nausea, muscle tightness, psychosomatic paralysis. Tell me this doesn’t describe how many Americans felt, watching our unwritten standards being demolished four years ago.

Many legal scholars and legislators have suggested laws, even Constitutional amendments, to prevent this happening again. Some have suggested making it constitutionally mandatory to pass physical fitness exams, release one’s taxes, and more. But that misses the point. Once these rules need to be written down, their moral heft has already gone. Setting it in black and white is a rear guard action.

We’ve heard President Trump called a “constitutional crisis.” But America, functionally, has two constitutions. And it’s not the written one that’s in jeopardy.