The last 4 years have taught me quite a bit about civics and just how much of our political system was created assuming we would have ethical adults running the country. For people who were trying to safeguard against someone coming along to rule them, most of what they put in place to stop it assumed that accountability to the voters would keep people ethical. Our current political mess is certainly shining a light on how optimistic our forefathers were.

I mean... at the highest level, our entire electoral college could make votes irrelevant assuming the right person could offer enough motivation for electors to ignore the results. While some states now have laws protecting against it, some still have not (and notably, this list includes some swing states).

Similarly, there were no official laws saying that the President shouldn't have business dealings that may be a conflict of interest... basically because we assumed we wouldn't have to and our system would make them beholden to the people. The idea that a President could make decisions that have little value to the American people other than to put billions of dollars in their own pocket and we would ever vote for them again is absurd. But here we are.

Likewise, it never seemed necessary to make a law like this for the Supreme Court because we have always just believed that they people we put there would be ethical individuals (after all, their actual job is to be arbitrators of justice). Moreover, we assumed that the sitting President would only choose ethical Justices and/or they wouldn't be confirmed otherwise. But again, here we are.

We have just found out how many loopholes our forefathers left on the assumption that we would be smart and ethical enough to put democracy first. They really underestimated how much political divisions could cause a complete lack of accountability, elections that look more like a reality TV show and go to the person who is loudest and most abrasive, and people to vote against their own self interests.