Every incoming president prepares to deal with crises in strife-torn capitals.
Unfortunately for President-elect Joe Biden, one such capital today is Washington, D.C.
The crisis crescendoed Wednesday when MAGA mobs — incited by a petulant president's unconscionable, unconstitutional effort to overturn an election he lost — stormed the Capitol and by extension, democracy itself.
Eventually, the marauders moved on. But the mob in Congress complicit in this nihilism remains — including Minnesota Republican Reps. Jim Hagedorn and Michelle Fischbach, who betrayed their so-called conservatism by betraying the Constitution. Ultimately, however, those contesting the election failed: Members of Congress still loyal to the Constitution certified the election. Biden becomes the 46th president on Jan. 20 at 12 p.m.
But that won't be high noon for America's governing crisis. In fact, it's likely that an unrepentant president and an unscrupulous political-media industrial complex will complicate Biden's bid to rally allies in order to address adversaries emboldened by this country's convulsions.
Such a constraint on the country's foreign policy are among the reasons why the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group listed our democracy's dysfunction as No. 1 in its annual "Top Risk" report, which was issued even before Wednesday's disgrace. It's the second straight year the geopolitical outlook has had a U.S. domestic issue as its top risk. Last year it proved prescient as it predicted 11 months in advance that "We face risks of a U.S. election that many will view as illegitimate, uncertainty in its aftermath, and a foreign policy environment made less stable by the resulting vacuum."
This year, they coined the top risk " '46*' — the opening of an era in which the occupant of the White House is viewed as illegitimate by roughly half the country. Donald Trump's refusal to accept the outcome of an election that he declares was stolen is unique in American history, underscoring how divided America has become — and will remain."
The report adds that "A superpower torn down the middle cannot return to business as usual. And when the world's most powerful country is so divided, everybody has a problem. The geopolitical recession — and our G-Zero world — will deepen as a result."