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I will always remember where I was when I heard Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. This is a historic moment.

What were living through, as David Rothkopf recognized, is nothing less than a moment of crisis in the history of American democracy. A number of observers have rightly compared the Comey firing to Richard Nixons infamous Saturday Night Massacre, when he fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in a bid to block efforts to gain access to secret tapes Nixon had made in the Oval Office.

As with Nixon, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Trump is seeking to cover up something and to place himself beyond the reach of the law.

Its well worth noting that Trumps decision to fire Comey is only the most recent attack on our constitutional democracy. This is a president and administration that have tried to undermine the independence of the federal courts, falsely accused political opponents of criminal acts, threatened the free press and turned the White House into a marketing opportunity for the Trump brand.

National crisis

The essential question right now is whether Republicans in Congress will recognize this is a national crisis that demands bipartisan action to make clear the president is not above the law. Americans should call for an independent investigation into the Trump campaign and administrations ties to Russia.

So far, only a few congressional Republicans seem to be considering this. But, as Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon observed: In America, the truth always comes out. I am inclined to agree with Wyden. Nixons decision to fire special prosecutor Cox ultimately led to Nixons resignation. We must similarly confront the possibility that Trump will not complete his first term in office.

If this happens, there will be no cause for celebration. The problem well all face, and indeed the problem we already face, is how we come through this crisis and emerge with a functional constitutional democracy meaning an executive branch accountable to the rule of law, free from corruption and scrubbed clean of authoritarian impulses.

There are no guarantees about any of this. Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden openly worries that American institutions may be melting down and its beginning to feel a little bit like Nicaragua around here. We must recognize that none of this will fix itself. A lot of hard work will be required.

Two big problems

There are two overarching problems. First, how will Americans who are concerned about Trumps authoritarian actions feel confident that constitutional democracy is intact? Second, how will Trumps supporters feel that their vote has not been taken away from them, in the event that Trump does leave office?

These are big challenges, to say the least. How can we take them on?

One first step would be having prominent Republicans and Democrats stand together to declare that what were dealing with is not a partisan dispute but a direct threat to our constitutional system. George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and other prominent Republicans like Hayden should join with Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and other nationally known Democrats to call for an independent investigation.

If an investigation does lead to either Trumps resignation or removal from office, Republicans and Democrats should form a kind of unity government. Assuming that Vice President Mike Pence is not himself tarnished by the many scandals swirling around this administration, he could succeed Trump as president and nominate a Democrat to serve as vice president. Democrats could also be named to cabinet and other important positions.

Even if Trump does not leave office before his first term is up, we cannot avoid our day of reckoning with the harm he has done. At some point, we must assess and seek to repair the damage our constitutional system has sustained.

Donald Trumps time in office has been more like a professional wrestling match than a legitimate presidency. It wont be easy to start setting things right, but its better to get started sooner rather than later.

Chris Edelson is an assistant professor of government in American Universitys School of Public Affairs. His latest book, Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security, was published in 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

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Opinion: After Comey's firing, how can we save our constitutional democracy? - MarketWatch

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South Korea's new president, Moon Jae-in, is wary of America's role in his country and has signaled he is open to warmer ties with North Korea. This has raised concerns in Washington. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

At a time when there's so much hand-wringing over the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of corrosive nationalismin the West, South Korea just offered a welcome reminder that people power is still alive.

In a snap election Tuesday, South Korean voters elected Moon Jae-in as the country's next president. Moon, aliberal politician, tookoffice Wednesday,marking the first time in a decade that Seoul's Blue Househas been occupied by a progressivepresident. His views on engagement with North Korea may put his government swiftly at odds with the Trump administration.

But that's not what is so striking about Moon's victory. His rise to power came amid seven months of political turbulence. First, South Korean media began reporting and investigatingallegations of corruption and bribery surrounding then-President Park Geun-hye. Mass protestsand legal proceedings followed, eventually leading to Park's impeachment and removal from power in March. The election cycle swung into gear, and Moon, a former human rights lawyercampaigning on an anti-corruption platform, was boosted by an electorate hungry for change.

South Korean's elected candidate of the Democratic Party, Moon Jae-in, as their new president on May 10, ending months of political turmoil in the country. (Reuters)

The protests against Park tapped into widespreadfrustration in the country over the pervasive reach of major South Korean conglomerates and their alleged collusion with political elites. Park's misdeeds reminded some South Koreans "how we havent cared enough about politics and have not been keeping close enough watch on how the government is run," said Kim Wan-kyu, a 34-year-old office worker who spoke to my colleague Anna Fifield when demonstrations first began in November.

It's a powerful story, especially in a country where democracy only replaced a decades-long, U.S.-backed dictatorship inthe late 1980s.

"South Korea still has many problems. But its people, buoyed up by an extraordinary wave of civic activism, are showing that they arent prepared to accept the established way of doing things," wrote my colleague Christian Caryl in March, when Park was forced out of office. "They have mounted a remarkable campaign for change, and today that campaign has borne fruit of the most dramatic sort. Their cousins to the north can only dream of similar acts of defiance which is why their country remains frozen in time, beholden to a leader whose only plan for the future is tied to the machinery of violence."

The focus now shifts to what Moon's presidency may look like. Domestically, he has "promised to improve transparency in government appointments and strengthen regulations on the conglomerates that dominate corporate South Korea," wrote Fifield on Tuesday. "Voters were also concerned about the anemic economy and the widening disparity between rich and poor. Moon promised to put together a huge stimulus package, to create 810,000 public-sector positions and to reduce long working hours." His party does not hold a majority.

But the more pressing question for observers in Washington ishow South Korea's attitude toward North Korea and the Trump administration's moves against Pyongyang may shift.Moonbelongs to aSouth Korean political tradition that is eager for rapprochement, or at least positive engagement, with North Korea. That is at odds with the White House's aggressive ratcheting up of tensions in the wake of North Korea's latest round of missile tests.

"Moon has stated he is not opposed to sanctions," explained academic Andrew Yeo in The Post's Monkey Cage blog. "But by seeking inter-Korea talks, promoting an 'economic community' and persuading regional partners to pursue engagement with rather than coercion against North Korea, the new South Korean government may find it difficult to coordinate its North Korea policy with Washington."

Moon has also bristled at the deployment of the U.S.'s sophisticated THAADmissile defense system in South Korea, which Moonclaims was authorized by the previousgovernment without a proper review and then fast-tracked before the election. Liberal discontent with THAAD in South Korea was deepened by Trump's own contention that South Korea should foot the bill for its deployment. "The perception is that Washington has bullied Seoul into accepting THAAD and then shoved the bill at its close ally," wrote Duyeon Kim in Foreign Affairs.

But thereare reasons for optimism on U.S.-South Korea ties, too.

Yeo suggests that, "like Koreas previous progressive presidents, Moon will seek to take greater initiative on issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsula rather than rely on just the United States or China." This may actually be welcome to the Trump administration and its insistence on an America First doctrinethat prioritizes extracting the United States from geopolitical quagmires elsewhere.

"I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived," said Moon to Fifield before the election. "President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but, during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong Un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue."

If Moon can develop a solid rapport with Trump, it may improve the chances of calming tensions with Pyongyang and send another signal to South Koreans that their demandsfor change have produced real results.

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South Korea just showed the world how to do democracy - Washington Post

Mainstream media in the Trump era have fashioned themselves as tribunes of the people and arbiters of truth. Democracy dies in darkness, warns the Washington Post; the New York Times intones, Truth. Its more important than ever. With the election of a Republican president, the media have rediscovered constitutional government. Suddenly, executive power must be constrained again. Checks and balances are all the rage. Federalism and states rights are no longer racist dog whistles, but essential antidotes to a domineering central government.

And yet, while the media clang their alarms about how Donald Trump is supposedly turning America into a fascist dictatorship, they largely neglect the fact that democracy really is dying in other parts of the world.

In Turkey, for instance, Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoans recent referendum victory allowed him to consolidate power over all three branches of the national government. Erdoans triumph followed on the heels of a failed coup, which he may have staged, and which enabled him to jail and thereby sideline thousands of political opponents. The media miss the broader context of these events: Turkey has now all but completed its transformation from a secular, Kemalist nation to an Islamist dictatorship. Ankara has undergone its equivalent of the Arab Spring, with the same disastrous result as in other countries. A modern, majority-Muslim nation of 80 million people has repudiated a 90-year experiment in relative Western liberalism for dictatorial rule under a man who describes himself as a servant of Sharia and who views democracy as merely a means to an end: You ride it until you arrive at your destination, and then you step off. As Andrew C. McCarthy aptly put it: Erdoan is an anti-Western, anti-Semitic, sharia-supremacist, jihadist-empowering anti-Democrat. . . . His referendum victory is the death knell for democracy in Turkey. Is the triumph of Islamism within a NATO-allied country no big deal, or is the commentariat unable or unwilling to report on it because of its past romance with Erdoan?

Another story that the media largely ignore is that of the collapse of Venezuela under socialism. The Lefts May Daybetter titled Victims of Communism Day came and went with barely a peep about the collapse of the once-vibrant Latin American nation under Hugo Chavez/Nicols Maduro Stalinism. Just as Turkey is about to fall under the veil of Islamist tyranny, Venezuela is reaching the logical conclusion of Leftist tyranny. Thousands have been taking to the streets in protest. Citizens are going hungry in a country that was once the richest in the region. The government is seizing the assets of global corporations. Inflation is running at 280 percent. In a nation that had banned private gun ownership, Maduro is now planning to arm up to 400,000 loyalists to preserve some semblance of order. Central planning and other attacks on individual liberty and private property rights have turned Venezuela into another failed Communist experiment, leaving its people mired in violence, poverty, and misery.

You might think that the downfall of a nation in Americas hemisphere under democratically elected socialists might be subject to intense media coverage. You would be wrong. Could it be that the Left does not wish to report on the end results of its policies?

Lastly, Hong Kongs one country, two systems policy may be heading toward the dustbin of history. During a celebration marking the 27th anniversary of the Basic Law, Hong Kongs constitution, Chinas Hong Kong Liaison Office Legal Chief Wang Zhenmin warned an audience that the more Hong Kong fails to actively defend the sovereignty, national security and development interests of the country [China] in accordance with law, the more wary the country might be on Hong Kongs high degree of autonomy and the two systems. Chapter I, Article 2 of the Basic Law guarantees the territory a high degree of autonomy, under which it can enjoy executive, legislative and independent judicial power. But this autonomy is eroding under pressure from Beijing. As I wrote elsewhere following a trip abroad to Hong Kong in 2016, China has been exerting its control [over Hong Kong] in ways small and large, from harassing reporters and book publishers unfriendly to Beijing to blocking elected officials from assuming office if they fail to recite a loyalty oath.

The Chinese are eroding freedom in Hong Kong, step by stepbut the press appears largely disinterested in the story. Perhaps the fearless democracy defenders of the fourth estate are afraid of running afoul of Chinas Communist censors, who might ban media outlets unwilling to comply with local censorship laws. Or maybe, sadly, they sense the inevitability that Hong Kong will be subsumed by China regardless of their reportage.

Whether under Islamist tyranny or the Leftist tyranny of the Latin American or Chinese varieties, democracy is gravely threatened in major areas of the world right now. By and large, the Western media intelligentsia has nothing to say about it. The march of authoritarianism does not seem to rise to the level of importance of the latest Trump Twitter outrage, or his comment about Andrew Jackson and the Civil War, or the manner in which a White House advisor sits on a couch in the Oval Office, to take just a few examples. The Washington Post and its cohorts are right that democracy dies in darkness. They should turn their attentions now and then to the places where the lights are going out.

Benjamin Weingarten(@bhweingarten) has written for The Federalist, PJ Media, and Conservative Review. He is founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting, production and publication advisory firm. You can find his work atbenweingarten.com.

Photo by Susana Gonzalez/GettyImages

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Where Democracy Really Does Die in Darkness - City Journal

New York Times

Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Rally Displaced by Pro-Beijing Event, Organizers Say New York Times HONG KONG Organizers of a pro-democracy rally held annually in July on the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China said on Wednesday that they had been denied permission to use a downtown park, a move that threatens to raise tensions ... Hong Kong pro-democracy rally application rejectedBBC News Annual July 1 Hong Kong democracy rally threatened as Victoria Park rejects venue applicationHong Kong Free Press all 5 news articles »

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Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Rally Displaced by Pro-Beijing Event, Organizers Say - New York Times

COMMENTARY

Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey caused barely a ripple on the glassy surface of equity markets, but more than 100 years of market and social data show that might be a mistake.

Or perhaps just premature: the long-term correlation between the future returns of financial markets and indicators of a healthy democracy and society are strong, according to a recent study.

We have documented that, over a five- or 10-year time scale, there has historically been, on average, a consistent positive correlation between future returns of a countrys stock market and past changes of the same countrys indicators that are socially good, Scott Axelrod and James Leitner of Falcon Management wrote in a December 2016 working paper for Swedens Varieties of Democracy Institute.

The institute has a database of indicators of a countrys democratic health, with data for 173 countries going back as far as 1900.

The indicators cover a wide range of areas of democratic function: from equality before the law, to government attacks on the judiciary, to the ability of legislative investigations to curb abuse by the executive branch of government. Do any of these sound familiar to observers of the Trump White House?

The study looked at 158 indicators, making a subjective judgment as to whether they were good and then comparing them to future stock market returns.

"The average over all four studies of the total correlation (across country-year pairs) between good past democracy indicators changes and future stock market returns is positive for 157 out of the 158 indicators that were selected solely based on whether they had enough data, the authors write.

In other words, more democracy pays off in higher long-term stock market returns.

We should note that many of the studied indicators are not mutually independent, meaning that they will tend to move together. A country which is, for example, limiting freedom of speech will often lack a variety of viewpoints in media, both measured areas.

To be sure, it is too early to have a full understanding of the intentions of the Trump administration in firing Comey, who had responsibility over investigations into connections between his presidential campaign and Russia.

Thus while the stock market is more likely to move today in reaction to estimations of how successful the administration will be in passing tax cuts, the development and strength of U.S. democratic institutions may be more important to returns over the very long term.

Interestingly, the one indicator not deemed good which correlated positively with future stock market returns was institutionalized autocracy, i.e. the extent to which power was vested in one person.

This is perhaps related to the argument which is sometimes made that China demonstrates that economic development need not go hand-in-hand with growing democratic freedom.

Perhaps not, but at least when it comes to China it seems a strong one-party state does also not go hand-in-hand with profitable stock markets. Despite China GDP increasing nine-fold from 1999-2015 its stocks have lagged. The MSCI China index only rose 29 percent from 1991 to 2015, compared to a 326 percent rise for emerging markets as a whole.

Putting aside the meaning of the actions of the Trump administration, anything other than a dire constitutional crisis in which, perhaps, the executive openly challenged its place in the order is unlikely to produce a big reaction.

A 2015 study by Heikki Lehkonen and Kari Heimonen of Finlands Jyvskyl University found that while there was a positive relationship between political risk and equity returns, the relationship between the level of democracy in a given market and political risk is parabolic, meaning higher levels of political risk create outsized market impacts.

Perhaps the impact of the erosion of democracy on markets is a bit like the old metaphor of boiling a frog. The water gets warmer and warmer, and finally hot, but by the time the frog notices and decides to get out, it is too late.

We may not be frogs, and Trump may not wish or not be successful in subverting the strength of U.S. democracy, but investors inside and outside the U.S. should take careful note.

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If Trump erodes democracy, stocks will suffer - STLtoday.com