'Most awesome transfer of power in the world' at risk on Election Day

The real action on Election Day in America is invisible, journalist Theodore H. White wrote in the first of his landmark “Making of a President” books six decades ago.

The lines of people waiting to cast ballots are the only outward signs of what takes place in secret.

"What results from the fitting together of these secrets is, of course, the most awesome transfer of power in the world—the power to marshal and mobilize, the power to send men to kill or be killed, the power to tax and destroy, the power to create and the responsibility to do so, the power to guide and the responsibility to heal—all committed into the hands of one man. Heroes and philosophers, brave men and vile, have since Rome and Athens tried to make this particular manner of transfer of power work effectively; no people has succeeded at it better, or over a longer period of time, than the Americans."

“No bands play on election day, no troops march, no guns are readied, no conspirators gather in secret headquarters. The noise and the blare, the bands and the screaming, the pageantry and oratory of the long fall campaign, fade on election day.”

“All the planning is over, all effort spent. Now the candidates must wait,” White said.

The process of this transfer is built on trust that must be recognized and supported.

For this election, marred by the pandemic and the attack by President Trump on the legitimacy of the process, the faith our system depends upon has been seriously damaged.

Alaska’s U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, have mostly stayed quiet in the corner during Trump’s reign, allowing him to lie and destroy the credibility of one institution after another, all for the greater glory of Trump. Murkowski and Sullivan got what they wanted—tax cuts for the wealthy, ANWR, judges, the lifting of environmental restrictions and more military deficit spending.

The assault on the fundamental belief in the power of the vote is just the latest Trump offensive that Murkowski, Sullivan and the rest of the GOP have watched unfold.

If Trump loses, I suspect he will claim that the election was stolen from him, as he has proved himself unable to accept defeat, graciously or otherwise. The noise, the blare and the screaming will not end.

The “most awesome transfer of power in the world” will be at grave risk.