“How Far Should Biden Go?” a recent piece in The Atlantic asked. The answer, in my opinion, is as far as he and his administration can over the next several years, keeping in mind all that’s on their plate. Atlantic staff writer James Fallow rightly underscored the need for prioritization and triage in planning, quoting the head of Jimmy Carter’s transition team James Watson: “You have to separate what must be done, soon, from all the other things you might want to do later in the administration.”

I’d like to see a number of issues tackled once the Biden administration has dealt with Fallow’s suggested priorities including “reversing the corrosion of the executive branch,” and instituting investigations into the horribly mismanaged Covid crisis, along with border policies that resulted in children being ripped from their parents, and the “negligent destruction of the norms of government, especially “the electoral process.”

It’s the norms of government that concern me most because many of those norms have resided in trusted tradition rather than codified law. That needs to end. Laws must be written that ensure we never reach another breaking point in our democracy.

The electoral process tops the list. As activist Joan Mandle says in a blog, “The lifeblood of our democracy is under threat from big private money in politics. Cynicism about politics and government is rampant.” The Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns added to that cynicism along with a 2014 a Court decision that raised the limit of individual contributions to parties and candidates to a staggering $3 million, suggesting that “the Supreme Court has declared war on campaign finance reform”.

Pro-democracy movements have struggled to change the way election campaigns are financed in the U.S. for years. One model they look to is the UK’s financing of campaigns. http://www.loc.gov/law/help/campaign-finance/uk.php Since 1883 UK legislation has existed that prevents excessive spending by electoral candidates. Their system regulates campaign financing by focusing on limiting political parties’ expenditures and transparent reporting of donations received and election expenditures.

The Electoral College is another piece of the electoral process that needs revisiting. In short, it needs to be abolished. Designed to keep both small and large states happy in determining who became president, it also reflected racist and misogynist ideologies. Most importantly, it is arguably anti-democratic. We’ve lost two presidents who won the popular vote, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, making a mockery of the “one man [sic], one vote” theory. Perhaps more alarming is the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, yet he won the Electoral College by 74 votes and became president. According to the Brookings Institute, a majority of Americans have long opposed the College. This may be in part because income inequality and geographical disparities across states could mean the College over-represents the views of a small number of people because of its structure, as Brookings Vice President Darrell West points out.

Several other reforms are called for, including term limits for both Congress and the Supreme Court. Proponents of Congressional term limits argue that restricting the time a representative or senator may serve would prevent politicians from amassing too much power, thus become out of touch with their constituents. Never was this more apparent than in the 116th Congress. (Opponents argue that elections are the way to limit terms but without campaign finance reform that is questionable.)

Advocates for term limits on the Supreme Court argue that the Court has become highly politicized along party lines, making a 5-4 or 6-3 Court dangerously partisan. A multitude of social justice and human rights decisions made by ideologues with lifetime appointments can spell disaster for key issues such as healthcare, reproductive rights, voting and civil rights, and more. Some analysts suggest well-defined 18-year terms as a way of restoring limits to what they call “the least accountable branch of government.” In September 2020 Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced a bill establishing staggered 18-year terms for SCOTUS justices.

Presidential pardon power must also be checked. While that power can offer mercy, it has been abused, never more so than by Donald Trump. As Princeton professor Keith Whittington notes, “Future abuses could be remedied through a constitutional amendment that makes explicit a president cannot pardon himself, takes pardons of immediate family members off the table, requires that pardons be issues only after conviction, or that pardons cannot be issued during the lame-duck period after presidential election and before president-elect has been inaugurated.”

Finally, a series of codified laws, which have existed since 2000 B.C.E., the most famous example being the Code of Hammurabi written in 1700 B.C.E., which codified the belief in “an eye for an eye” https://study.com/academy/lesson/codified-law-definition-lesson.html, must replace our trust in tradition if democracy is to prevail and remain sustainable. As the last four years have demonstrated, bipartisan legislation is clearly required and urgently needed.

It’s a tall order, I know, but as James Fallows noted, there is a “never-ending mission of forming a more perfect union.” The time to begin that daunting mission is now.

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Elayne Clift writes about politics, women, and social justice from Saxtons River, Vt.

Finally, Donald Trump is gone from the White House. The time to hope that democracy can prevail is back, however challenging, in view of the shocking events that took place at the Capital. As we begin the hard work of moving forward and restoring faith in America, we can work toward a hopeful and secure future, despite the continuing pandemic and a plethora of political travesties, including possible widespread collusion that runs deep and wide.

The task of undoing the legacy of disasters we inherited after four years of ignorant, destructive, Draconian policies and actions, and an attempted coup, is Herculean. All that we have endured during the Trump administration was perpetrated by a monumentally corrupt administration devoid of human instincts and moral behavior. It will be hard to clean up the mess. In the words of a New York Times editorial last month, “Corruption and abuse of power are the most urgent issues in need of addressing.”

The effects of years of corruption and abuse are hideous and potentially long lasting. Many of them are addressed in the Protecting Our Democracy Act introduced by House Democrats last September. A landmark, comprehensive package of reforms, the Act was designed to “Prevent Presidential Abuses, Restore Our System of Checks and Balances, Strengthen Accountability and Transparency, and Protect our elections.” It’s worth reading.

Among the damage we must now address are four troubling issues. The first involves two women, one brilliant, the other potentially vicious.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a legal genius. The victories she achieved while on the Supreme Court are legendary. She argued six critical cases before the Supreme Court, winning five of them. On the Court she helped win landmark decisions that changed the face of America for the better.

Compared to RBG, Amy Coney Barrett is a lightweight, demure but deadly, given her proclivity for taking the country backwards. Her legal experience and history hardly qualify her for a seat on the Supreme Court. She has none of the experience that leads to the Court, and almost no experience practicing law.

The point of this comparison is that we stand to lose every advancement in civil society that RBG helped effect only to see our country returned to a time when racism and misogyny prevailed – unless we balance the Supreme Court by adding new appointees and end the flood of unqualified conservative judges to Federal benches.

The second abhorrent legacy of the Trump administration is the plight of children torn from their mothers, forever psychologically damaged by unspeakable evil. Who can bear to see the faces or hear their cries from abusive camps? How can we not weep for for what the Trump administration did in America’s name? What reparations will be sufficient for incarcerated children denied decent food, medical care, human touch, and a bed? What can be said of a boy who couldn’t stop crying and was mocked by guards laughing at distraught toddlers. What will soothe the parents of children who died in custody?

How do we repair this crime against humanity, this unbearable cruelty? How do we remove the stain of our country’s sin? Perhaps arresting the architect of this atrocity, Stephen Miller, former Attorney General Jeff Session, and other government officials who sanctioned ripping kids, including nursing infants, away from their parents would be a good start. Shutting down ICE is another.

Then, there is the stain of our extraordinary Covid crisis, a killer virus that was ignored, dismissed, and inflamed by our own Super Spreader, whose ignorance, contempt for science, lies, and politicization of a public health emergency led to the world’s worst infection rate and tens of thousands of excruciating, unnecessary deaths, massive family trauma, and a collapsed economy. I believe the Trump administration’s lack of an urgent response to the pandemic can legitimately be viewed as negligent homicide for which he and his enablers must be held accountable.

Finally, and especially in view of recent events, underpinning everything else for which we must atone is the damage done to our democracy, which once offered a beacon of hope around the world, Gone, too, is the respect global leaders held for us as a nation, now mocked and reviled. The blindfolded Lady Justice and the robed Roman goddess Libertas atop the Statue of Liberty must have wept for all that had been lost and must now, somehow, be restored. Will we again open our arms to “[the] tired, [the] poor”? Will we “lift [our] lamp beside the Golden door,” free of our national shame?

It will take years, perhaps decades and new generations, to bring us back from the brink, to serve justice, to commit to human rights for all, to embrace our common humanity, to behave responsibly, to reject the underbelly of a nation that showed itself to be undeniably racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic as well as so terrified of women that it tried desperately to control our bodies.

Dare we hope that we can do the hard work required of us? Can we truly commit to never subjecting ourselves, our progeny, or our country to another national nightmare? Are we capable of changing our children’s legacy?

Can we agree that anything else is unthinkable?

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com