J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts, sits with fellow Supreme Court justices for a group portrait at the Supreme Court Building in Washington Nov. 30, 2018.

It is rare that John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, speaks outside the courtroom. When he does make a public statement, he often talks about the same thing.

Take his year-end report, which included a familiar appeal to his fellow judges and comes ahead of a potentially landmark six months for both him and the high court.

“We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary. ... But we should also remember that justice is not inevitable,” he wrote. “We should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity, and dispatch.”

“We should each resolve,” he added, “to do our best to maintain the public’s trust that we are faithfully discharging our solemn obligation to equal justice under the law.”

That refrain will be under scrutiny as the chief justice swears in U.S. senators Thursday in the third impeachment trial in American history. The institutional integrity of the federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, has been a high priority for Chief Justice Roberts since his confirmation in 2005. He has worked, often successfully, to craft unanimity on the high court, and in recent years he has defended the judiciary’s independence from attacks by President Donald Trump.

He has also never had as much power on the high court as he does right now. Since Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement in June 2018 he has been the ideological center of the court, perhaps only the second chief justice to have ever been in such a position. He is often the deciding vote in politically divisive cases – and several of those cases await the chief justice in the coming months.

For an institutionalist like Chief Justice Roberts, the political storms ahead may be the most challenging period of his judicial career.

A man who famously declared that judges are like umpires who are supposed to “call balls and strikes” during his confirmation hearing will now have the opportunity – or the burden, depending on your perspective – to craft a strike zone that will have a tremendous significance for the country, the president, and public trust in the courts.

“He is already very cognizant of the somewhat precarious state of the judiciary currently,” says Amy Steigerwalt, a political science professor at Georgia State University.

“The court is on the precipice of [several divisive cases]. He’s standing in the middle of it ... and he will have to preside over an impeachment trial while this is all going on,” she adds. “There’s a lot there, and I think it’s going to be really difficult.”

Trial by fire?

After the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist evaluated his own performance thus: “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who clerked for the Arizona justice two decades earlier, will likely be studying how his former boss handled the proceeding, as well as how former Chief Justice Salmon Chase handled the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

The Constitution mandates that the chief justice be sworn in to replace the vice president as “presiding officer” of the Senate during an impeachment trial. There are few other clearly codified rules, but one guarantee is that it will be the brightest spotlight Chief Justice Roberts has been under his entire career.

“I expect he’s not very happy about having to do this,” says Steven Schwinn, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago’s John Marshall Law School.

“It puts him potentially in the middle of this political firestorm, and he has actively avoided that kind of thing in his time on the bench,” he adds.

An impeachment trial is only a sort-of trial, and the presiding officer is only a sort-of judge. Any decision a presiding officer makes can be overruled by a majority vote of the Senate. The presiding officer can also refer rulings on motions, such as the calling of witnesses, to a Senate vote.

This gives a chief justice significant room to interpret the role as they wish. Rehnquist interpreted it as largely ceremonial, with his one ruling of consequence upholding an objection from a Democratic senator that senators not be referred to as “jurors.”

“The Senate is not simply a jury. It is a court in this case,” he said, in a ruling that could be a precedent his former clerk follows.

Chase was more proactive in the Johnson impeachment trial, handling the proceeding more as a normal trial and ruling on evidence- and witness-related motions, subject to Senate approval.

“My sense is Roberts will take his own path here,” says Timothy Huebner, a history professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. “He might actually see this as an opportunity for the court, and the entire constitutional system, to be elevated above partisan politics.”

Were he to play a more outsize role in the impeachment trial, Professor Huebner admits, the chief justice would have to walk “a very fine line.” His every move and word will be scrutinized through a partisan lens, and few things could damage public confidence in the Supreme Court as much as the perception that the chief justice has put a thumb on the scale of a president’s removal or acquittal.

This is particularly true in the social media age – and the age of the social media presidency.

During the House impeachment hearings, Mr. Trump sometimes provided explosive real-time reactions via social media. Similar reactions would be likely in a Senate trial, this time with the chief justice – whom Mr. Trump has criticized in the past – in the crosshairs.

While he did respond to Mr. Trump’s last attack on the judiciary, saying that “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges,” the intense examination and interpretation of his actions that an impeachment trial will likely bring is why many experts believe the chief justice will keep a relatively low profile. Why should he rule on something significant, like witness testimony, that could ignite a public backlash when he could, with sound legal justification, refer it to the Senate?

“Whatever he could do to avoid that kind of a conflict he will be very interested in doing,” says Sara Benesh, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

That in turn could advance his goal of bolstering the image of the Supreme Court as an institution above the political fray.

“Being up on the dais and sort of in charge, and then being very apolitical – which is what I expect he’ll do – might enhance the public’s trust in the court,” adds Professor Benesh.

“Especially given the parameters of the impeachment trial,” she continues, “I’m not sure he could do anything” to harm the high court’s reputation.

A blockbuster term

After the impeachment trial, the Supreme Court’s reputation for impartiality will still have several more hurdles to clear.

Recent terms have been relatively sleepy, amid political controversy over the confirmation of two conservative Trump nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But the justices are now having to reckon with big issues and cases they had kept at arm’s length.

Last term, Chief Justice Roberts made headlines by voting with his four liberal colleagues to pause the implementation of a restrictive Louisiana abortion law while the justices decided whether to review an appeal against it.

Although the law – which requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital – is virtually identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 2016, a federal appeals court upheld it. The justices will review that decision, with oral arguments scheduled for early March. There is one key difference between the Louisiana case and its Texas predecessor: the two new justices who will help decide it. For the chief justice, that’s a problem.

“It raises that prospect that changes to a couple of members of the court can fundamentally change what is the ruling of the court,” says Professor Steigerwalt. “It puts into tension this idea that the court’s interpretation of the Constitution is free from the political whims.”

Louisiana is asking for the court to “narrow” and “limit” its ruling in the 2016 case, which held that regulating access to abortion must advance a valid purpose like protecting women’s health and safety. Chief Justice Roberts was one of three justices to dissent from that ruling, but when reviewing the Louisiana law he will likely take a more cautious approach.

“He has got to be thinking that [Texas] is a relatively recent decision, and that if the court is going to rule differently in the [Louisiana] case it’s got to have a really good, factually distinguishable reason,” says Professor Schwinn. “It may be tough to thread that needle.”

Later that month the court is expected to hear a case concerning President Trump. Unlike previous cases involving the Trump administration, such as the travel ban (which the court upheld) in 2018 and the census citizenship question (which the court struck down) last year, this trio of cases concerns the president as an individual – specifically, whether investigators in New York and in Congress can subpoena his personal financial records from a third party.

Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers are arguing the broad position that, as a sitting president, he should be immune from criminal investigation while in office. The U.S. Department of Justice has supported the president in an amicus brief, though making a narrower argument that while a sitting president isn’t immune from investigation, prosecutors should have to make a more compelling case.

“Whatever the court has to say on them will seem political,” says Professor Schwinn. “Legally I don’t think they’re hard.”

“They are politically charged to be sure,” he adds. But “in all these cases I think the authority is there to order the president to release his taxes.”

“Lip service” or action?

Chief Justice Roberts has been thinking about the institution of the Supreme Court for half of his life. He began arguing cases there in his 30s, and he has been chief justice for almost 15 years, but it is only recently that he has truly taken control of “the Roberts court.”

He has been a reliably conservative vote since he joined the high court. But now, sitting in the court’s ideological center, there is some evidence that he may, in certain cases, put the court’s institutional interests ahead of his own jurisprudential desires.

Last term – his first as the court’s “swing” justice – he wrote the court’s plurality opinion blocking the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a ruling that upset his conservative colleagues and the Trump administration.

That same day he also wrote the court’s opinion, joined by his four conservative colleagues, holding that federal judges cannot rule on claims of partisan gerrymandering, a ruling that delighted Republicans.

Parallel to that, however, he has continuously worked to build and safeguard institutional strength of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. His year-end report was the latest explicit example. The next six months will be the latest, and perhaps toughest, test of that institution under his leadership.

“The bottom line is the best predictor for his decision-making is his ideology,” says Professor Benesh. But “he’s definitely given a lot of lip service [to the idea] that the court ... has to fight against the notion that it’s not deciding cases impartially.”

“If he continually espouses those ideas and feels strongly about that,” she adds, “we have to think they will come into play when they’re relevant for him in his decision-making over the [rest] of the term.”
 

One thing was made very clear in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s national address Wednesday: The federation’s long-standing leader isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Mr. Putin outlined the sweeping constitutional changes that would allow him to retain some power even after leaving office in 2024, by redistributing power away from the presidency to the prime minister and the parliament.

But for many Russians, the changes proposed also come with a glimmer of hope that a peaceful transition from one leader to the next may be possible – something that has traditionally been fraught with instability and intra-elite conflict over Russian history. And while the constitutional change will ensure Mr. Putin’s continued influence, it opens the door to a Russia ruled by representative government, rather than autocrat.

“The purpose of all this is to change the composition of power to provide for a painless transition of the presidency from Putin to another person” when his term expires in 2024, says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a political sociologist who has been observing Russia’s shifting power elites for at least three decades. “What matters is not who will be the next president, but where Putin will go. Whatever post Putin takes up, that’s where the center of power will be, at least in the beginning. First the new president will have to work in tandem with Putin. But gradually, Putin may disengage.”

Planning for a post-Putin presidency

The plan that Mr. Putin outlined in his annual state of the nation address to parliament is still a work in progress. But its main elements would significantly weaken the all-powerful presidency enshrined in Russia’s 1993 Constitution and devolve significant powers to the State Duma (parliament’s lower house), including the right to appoint the prime minister and government, as well as to the Federation Council (parliament’s upper house). A somewhat weakened president would be limited to two terms of office, rather than two consecutive terms – a loophole that has enabled Mr. Putin himself to remain in power for the past two decades.

Another highly significant, but as yet unexplained, amendment would give constitutional status and plenary powers to the State Council, a hitherto obscure Kremlin advisory body that was mainly a talking shop for top leaders rather than an active participant in governance.

In a clear sign that Mr. Putin is in a hurry, he immediately accepted the resignation of the entire government and moved Dmitry Medvedev, his longtime prime minster and political partner, to a prestigious but powerless job in the Kremlin Security Council. He then appointed a new prime minister: Mikhail Mishustin, a professorial, English-speaking technocrat who has radically reformed and modernized Russia’s taxation system over the past decade, reputedly raising tax revenues by 40%.

Russian official sources say that, after a public discussion, a nationwide referendum will be held to approve the revised constitution, probably before the end of this year.

Stepan Goncharov, a researcher at the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent pollster, says that the number of Russians who say they would like to see fundamental political change has been steadily growing, from 57% in 2017 to 59% in 2019. “Real incomes have been falling, protest moods are growing, and so the pressure on the authorities to relieve tensions and demonstrate that changes are taking place is very strong,” he says. “It remains to be seen whether these initiatives are seen as effective.”

Asked about Mr. Putin’s plan Thursday, a few Russians expressed pessimism, tinged with fatalism. “I think we are heading in the same direction as China, where everything is under the state control, nobody is allowed to speak his mind, and we are all a united and happy state,” says Natalya Omskaya, a 30-something exhibition organizer.

“If this is all about who will take this or that post, it’s a no-win situation for most of us anyway,” says Alla Anashkina, a bookkeeper nearing retirement age. “They should better think about how to raise our pensions.”

A system “more ordinary”

Most Western coverage has focused on the undeniably astonishing spectacle of a Kremlin leader wielding his undisputed authority to rearrange his nation’s constitutional furniture in order to ensure the reins of power remain in his own hands, even if he intends to eventually transition from political center stage. One of three basic options that have been under active discussion for the past year now looks certain to be implemented.

First, after his current term ends, Mr. Putin might return to the post of prime minister, which he held during the single term of Mr. Medvedev’s presidency, but with newly minted powers that no previous Russian prime minister has enjoyed.

Second, he might take leadership of the freshly empowered State Council, which analysts say will probably be endowed with control over formulating Russia’s foreign policy and commanding the security forces.

Third, Mr. Putin might succeed in his long-standing efforts to unify Russia with neighboring Belarus, and then take the leadership of a whole new state, with a new constitutional setup. It’s a deeply troubled project that has triggered passionate protests in Belarus, but talks to complete the union state have intensified in recent months.

Some Russians argue there is no contradiction between Mr. Putin hanging around in some capacity to guarantee stability, and his stated goal of redistributing power in favor of the elected parliament. Although post-Soviet Russia’s brief experiment with parliamentary democracy ended in gunfire and restoration of Kremlin supremacy in 1993, there are many who still argue that such a vast and diverse country as Russia would be served better by a representative legislature than by a single strong leader.

“Putin aims to change Russia’s governing system from that of an extraordinary situation to one that is more ordinary,” says Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser. “We needed extraordinary measures following the catastrophic 1990s when, under Boris Yeltsin, Russian statehood was nearly destroyed. Russia needed strong personal rule, a kind of dictatorship like Charles de Gaulle imposed in France [when the Fourth Republic collapsed], because the country needed to be saved. ...

“This has by now been accomplished. Putin fulfilled this role, and Russia is strong and stable again. We can move to a more ordinary system, phase out personal power, and ensure a greater distribution of power.”

Mr. Markov disputes the view that Mr. Putin is just acting to preserve and extend his own personal authority. “Look,” he says, “if Putin wanted to be declared president for life, he could easily make that happen. But he is doing this instead. Putin wants to leave power in 2024 having moved Russia to a more institutional and collective form of government. Possibly he will continue to play a role within that collective, but the system will be changed.”

Others take a dimmer view, and argue that it’s all just smoke and mirrors aimed at obscuring the lack of genuine political reform.

“Changes in the wording of the constitution don’t mean real change,” says Viktor Sheinis, one of the original authors of Russia’s 1993 Constitution. “If the basic system remains the same, and parliamentary deputies are elected by the same means they are today, then the composition of the Duma won’t change and the appearance of redistributed power will remain purely formal. What we need is serious electoral reform, to introduce real political competition into the system. Then we might see some positive changes.”

It was 1970. Congress was wrestling with whether to give the right-of-way necessary to build a huge, 800-mile oil pipeline across Alaska, when a district judge blocked the project, using a brand new law requiring federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of projects.

“The Interior Department was stunned,” recalls William Reilly, a staff member in the Nixon administration at the time and later Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator. The law’s environmental impact statements, common today, were completely novel at the time. Even the authors of the statute, he says, “never anticipated it would have that effect.”

Exactly 50 years later, that law – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – is under attack. The Trump administration last week announced proposed reforms to the act that would significantly reduce its scope. It’s the latest move in an unprecedented effort to roll back not only recent Obama-era environmental regulations but also some of the bedrock laws that have shaped federal environment policy since the 1970s.

“It’s not unique in being a pushback against regulation, or even in favoring the energy industry, but it’s unique in just how relentless it has been, and how many regulations they’ve tried to undo,” says Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley. There have been at least 50 significant environmental regulations President Trump has targeted, Professor Farber notes. “They’re leaving no stone unturned.”

For Mr. Trump, who as a developer has had his own battles with environmental reviews, it’s a pendulum swing that is long overdue.

“The United States will not be able to compete and prosper in the 21st century if we continue to allow a broken and outdated bureaucratic system hold us back from building what we need: the roads, the airports, the schools, everything,” he said last week in announcing proposed changes to NEPA.

Environmental consideration versus delay 

Critics of the act, who often complain about lengthy environmental reviews and the impact statements required for major projects, welcomed his proposal, which would not only impose new deadlines on such studies but would also narrow the range of what could be considered.

“This is not about anti-regulation,” says Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. “It’s about having a smart process in place and a certain process in place, so that we can get decisions that will unlock the investment necessary to get these projects built as critical infrastructure.” If there’s no certainty about when a project will be approved, it’s harder to attract investors, he adds.

But others note that NEPA has played a critical role simply by ensuring that the environment gets consideration. 

“It’s something that says: ‘Consider, reflect. Is this something you want to do? Is this the best way to do it? Are there any other ways you could do it?’” says Mr. Reilly, the former EPA administrator.

In the case of the trans-Alaska pipeline, it took more than four years of wrangling, an Arab oil embargo, and a special act of Congress before the permits were approved. 

But Mr. Reilly recalls the chairman of the oil company in charge telling him that the final project was more robust and sound as a result of the environmental-review process. “In the eyes of the person most closely concerned about it, it was a very constructive intervention,” he says.

A 2016 Congressional Research Service report says critics overstate the permitting process’ effect on project delays. Insufficient data, lack of funds, and state and local issues are far more likely to increase project length than environmental reviews.

Some projects languish in permit purgatory for up to a decade, but the vast majority do not. The average length of time for a full environmental impact statement takes 4.5 years, according to the Council on Environmental Quality. Furthermore, only 1% of projects within the NEPA umbrella complete an EIS, according to a 2014 Governmental Accountability Office report.

Many people want a speedier process, acknowledge Mr. Reilly and others. And if that were the administration’s sole objective, the proposed changes would be less controversial. But by narrowing the range of projects that require environmental review and no longer requiring consideration of a project’s “cumulative” effects – which, under President Barack Obama, were expanded to include long-term climate change impacts – the administration is targeting the backbone of U.S. environmental policy for 50 years.

Beyond Obama-era regulations

Early deregulation efforts from the Trump Administration targeted Obama-era rules: the “Clean Water Rule” that defined what waters are subject to federal water protection; the Clean Power Plan, designed to regulate carbon dioxide pollution; and methane rules, regulating the release of a potent greenhouse gas. One of Trump’s most controversial actions, the legality of which is still being tested in the courts, has been an attempted reduction of two National Monument designations in Utah. And there is evidence of a significant shift toward less enforcement of regulations and policies that remain on the books.

Whittling away the government’s regulatory structures has always been part of Mr. Trump’s agenda, but his dismantling of the EPA is unique, says Caitlin McCoy, a fellow in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School who tracks such changes. Changing NEPA is the latest sign that the administration wants to undermine the statutory foundations of the EPA.

“They’re trying to take away the very things that the agency relies upon to do its job and to really severely damage its legal authority to function,” she says. “With other agencies, it’s similar, like, yes, we’re relaxing some of these tax rates, but it’s not like we’re trying to keep the IRS from doing audits.”

It’s not clear how successful the administration will be.

“For at least some of these regulations, the appeals will not hold up in court,” says Professor Farber. It’s not clear in the case of NEPA, for instance, whether Trump has the power to drastically reinterpret a major law enacted by Congress. 

But for Trump, the payoff politically, showing his determination to undo environmental regulations that many view as overly burdensome, may be enough.

“Trump is doing overreach, and getting his comeuppance in the courts,” says Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University. “But it looks good [to his supporters] in 2020.”

Courtesy of GSOP

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts meets with members of the Love 2020 project in New Hampshire, which brings together religious leaders, community organizers, and labor unions to tackle issues such as immigration and economic justice.

The Rev. Jonathan Hopkins wishes every candidate for president would grapple with a troubling truth about this city: Many working people aren’t making ends meet. Some are still in their Walmart uniforms when they’re fed at the soup kitchen where he and his congregants volunteer.

Now, with the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary fast approaching, Mr. Hopkins is finding he doesn’t have to wish quite so much. He’s part of a group of New Hampshire clergy who have been meeting with White House hopefuls, in an effort to inject faith-based, moral concerns into Democratic presidential politics. For the candidates, these Love 2020 events offer a chance to get cozy with religious movers and shakers who, they hope, might sway some of the voters in their flocks.

Mr. Hopkins wants to know what each candidate will do to break the cycle of poverty for working people. So far, he’s participated in sit-downs with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

“We are asking questions that are not being asked of them in general,” says Mr. Hopkins, pastor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Concord. It’s an arena where spirituality is explored – even with candidates like Senator Sanders, who describes himself as “not particularly religious.”

“Bernie, for sure, he’s got some spiritual depth,” says Mr. Hopkins. “Maybe not religious depth, but spiritual depth. ... He said we all should care about the least among us.”

Sessions with 11 Democratic candidates and one Republican (former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld) were all open to the press, according to Love 2020 organizers. But when Mr. Buttigieg sat down with the group in early January at St. Paul’s Church in downtown Concord, campaign staffers insisted that this reporter wait outside, despite having been invited to cover the event. They gave no reason, saying only that the meeting was private.

Mr. Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, is hardly shy about his Christian faith, which he often invokes on the campaign trail as a moral guide for shaping policy positions. “What’s important to me is to make sure that I’m engaging with [faith leaders] and with those that they guide and care for,” he said after the meeting, as a black SUV waited to whisk him to a Nashua town hall event. With recent polls showing a tight race in New Hampshire, the campaign was perhaps taking no chances on a religion-charged gaffe.

Courtesy of Arnie Alpert

The Rev. Jonathan Hopkins speaks with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, during a Love 2020 event Jan. 4, 2020, in Concord, New Hampshire. It’s an effort to connect clergy with candidates in a Democratic Party that’s increasingly secular.

Navigating the sensitive terrain where faith meets progressive politics is par for the course for Love 2020, a project of the Granite State Organizing Project (GSOP), which brings together religious leaders, community organizers, and labor unions to tackle issues such as immigration and economic justice. It’s an effort to connect clergy with candidates in a Democratic Party that’s increasingly secular and cautiously experimenting to find where faith fits, if anywhere, in its political mix.

For candidates, courting clergy support is nothing new – not even here, in what is, according to Gallup and the Pew Research Center, one of America’s least religious states. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama’s campaign team called on religious leaders individually, according to the Rev. Jason Wells, executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches. Inspired by the outreach, Mr. Wells, who was then a parish rector, volunteered for Mr. Obama by canvassing door to door in his time off.

This time around, campaigns don’t seem to be wooing faith leaders individually as they used to, Mr. Wells says.

Indeed, Love 2020 was born to fill a void, organizers say, amid a growing dearth of meaningful dialogue with candidates. Campaigns are often most concerned with preventing unscripted soundbites, notes Arnie Alpert, co-director of the New Hampshire Program of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-based activist organization. For example, when Senator Warren does her famous selfie line for photos, “her staff people take your phone from you, and then they take the ‘selfie,’” Mr. Alpert says with a laugh. “What that does is keep you from using your phone to actually record the interaction.”

Progressive faith leaders believe Love 2020 provides a meaningful alternative – and they’ve been working hard to secure a seat at the table in New Hampshire. They have raced, sometimes with just a few hours’ notice, to meet with candidates in churches, barns, anywhere they can get a brief audience with the person who might be their next president. They say they’re trying to reframe what faith-based political action can look like.

“We do not talk about abortion, we do not talk about the traditional faith-based things,” said Eva Castillo, a Venezuelan immigrant who directs the New Hampshire Alliance of Immigrants and Refugees. “We show them a different face of faith, you know? More open-minded, more equalizing.”

All the major Democratic contenders, with the exception so far of former Vice President Joe Biden, have carved out time to meet with the Love 2020 group of clerics, each of whom has a local following and a measure of clout.

“This spotlight on our state gives us a chance to influence the national dialogue,” says GSOP Executive Director Sarah Jane Knoy. “To focus on our shared values and our common humanity – because the current national dialogue is very divisive and, I think, really kind of hateful.”

For local religious leaders, Love 2020 also provides a platform to ask the kinds of values questions candidates don’t always hear elsewhere. In a video of the Buttigieg session, provided by Love 2020 organizers, the Rt. Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, bishop of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, can be heard asking: “What’s in your soul? What’s in your heart that is going to help us reknit together the torn social fabric?”

Mr. Buttigieg responded that when he’s campaigning, his soul is “just out there for everyone to see.”

“There is a crisis of belonging in our country that I think is propelling everything from the brokenness of our politics to mental health issues” including rising rates of suicide and drug addiction, he told the group. “Holding the American project together depends so much on whether we can create that sense of belonging. ... It may well be the most important function of the presidency.”

The clergy also minister to the candidates they meet, much as evangelical leaders have done when laying hands on President Donald Trump and praying for him. Mr. Hirschfeld led Mr. Buttigieg and the assembled group in prayer.

The Rev. Sarah Rockwell of St. Andrew’s Church in Manchester offered another kind of spiritual support to Mr. Buttigieg, as he navigates the pressures and personal tolls of running for president. “Keeping a marriage intact – it is not easy,” Ms. Rockwell quietly said to the candidate as they left the meeting room. “You are in my prayers, and so is he.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Buttigieg said with a smile. “Keep the prayers coming.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect date for the upcoming New Hampshire primary. It is Feb. 11.

Reuters

U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger introduces the House impeachment managers on the floor of the Senate Jan. 16.

In many countries, where checks on both power and the abuse of power are scarce, people will be watching in awe as the U.S. Senate decides whether to remove President Donald Trump from office. Even though many Americans view either the House impeachment or the Senate trial as partisan, the formal exercise in accountability stands out on the global scene.

Just note these examples in a few big nations in which citizens have recently been denied a right to rein in personal power or ensure leaders reflect the integrity of their societies:

Two years ago, China’s president, Xi Jinping, arranged to have the ruling Communist Party eliminate a two-term limit on the presidency, allowing him to rule as “supreme leader” for life. A new official song for him is titled “To Follow You Is to Follow the Sun.”

In Egypt last year, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi won approval from parliament to rule until 2034 and to control the judiciary. He now has “authority with no accountability” in the Arab world’s most populous nation, said one Egyptian critic.

And in Russia on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 20 years through concocted constitutional changes, made a similar move. Facing term limits in 2024, he proposed “reforms” that may allow him to rule for decades as head of a supreme “state council.”

Such authoritarian leaders can be popular – for a while. They might rule effectively to make “the trains run on time.” Yet such rule is based on the notion that individuals are not equal and cannot be trusted to define their freedom and rights through public deliberation, negotiation, and free elections. Leaders who arbitrarily set the law or deny an institutionalized mechanism for popular accountability place themselves and their cronies above the law. Corruption arises. Big mistakes are made as alternative voices are kept silent.

Holding people accountable relies on the very idea that values such as equality are universal. Just witness the mass protests of the past year in Hong Kong, Sudan, Chile, Iraq, and elsewhere. The vast numbers alone represent a demand for leaders to pay better regard to the greater good, which is best reflected in democracy. “We must always live as if we expected to have to give an account of what we have been doing,” said the statesman Scipio Africanus of ancient Rome.

In a study last year of 179 countries by the Varieties of Democracy Institute, democracy seems to be holding its own. Between 2008 and 2018 – and despite a global recession – 21 countries made progress while 24 were in the process of “autocratization.” Democracy still prevails in a majority (99) of countries. This means the methods of accountability, such as an independent judiciary and constitutional limits on executive power, still endure. In the United States, it means the people allow an impeachment trial of a president, no matter their disagreement or the outcome. Despite flaws in the process, they see their civic values at work.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world that is not so democratic can take note.