Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.
Our system of government has long been recognized and valued for what makes it worthwhile and workable—the checks and balances the U.S. Constitution provides among and between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of federal and state governments,
End of civics lesson.
That’s because the system is being abandoned, essentially junked, at democracy’s peril. Thanks to Donald Trump’s endless provocations and abuse of power, a politicized version of Whack-A-Mole is replacing our checks and balances.
That’s the arcade game in which moles pop up randomly from holes in a console and the player tries to salvage some sanity by engaging in repetitive and futile tasks of whacking the moles with a mallet. Trump’s abuses of office are so frequent and numerous that they defy systematic checks and balances among the branches of government.
It’s difficult for the whacks of truth to keep up with Trump’s spewing of lies.
At least the arcade player scores some points, unlike those trying hold Trump accountable through checks and balances.
Sadly, the electorate should have known better. So should the Republican-controlled Congress in general and members of the Iowa delegation in particular.
For some perspective, let’s take a brief detour into the 1950s before returning to our tribulations today—and likely, worse to come.
Some 70 years ago, Joseph Welch, born in Primghar, Iowa, and a 1914 graduate of Grinnell, provided a turning point in a nation cursed by the ramblings and rantings and resulting divisiveness of McCarthyism.
That came when Welch confronted U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin at the Army-McCarthy hearings on June 9, 1954.
That was the 30th day of those hearings, which followed five years of the country dealing with the Red/Communist scare McCarthy fomented.
Hooray for Welch and Smith
Welch was an attorney hired to represent the U.S. Army. Exasperated, he spoke for his client and millions of citizens when he asked McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
The audience, including news reporters, burst into applause—a rare occurrence at such hearings.
Welch’s comment has been seen as a turning point in the nation’s dealing with McCarthyism. If so, the climax was a longtime coming.
Senator Magaret Chase Smith of Maine delivered what became known as her “Declaration of Conscience” speech on June 1, 1950. Her warning to her Senate colleagues is just as relevant now: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
The Senate finally voted 67-22 to condemn McCarthy for conduct “contrary to senatorial traditions” on December 2, 1954.
The 36-word excerpt from Smith’s declaration is worth reading again, because it applies so well to Trumpism in our time:
“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
Today’s echoes of Smith and Welch
If likening Trump to McCarthy seems either an understatement or an exaggeration, here are some stand-alone current assessments of Trump and the Trump administration
• From well-respected, conservative columnist George Will on a U.S. strike against supposed Venezuela drug traffickers, whose boat had already been destoyed: “The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine demonstrated.”
• From Russell Moore, the editor-at large of Christianity Today, regarding Trump’s “deranged” comments about the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele: “How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation.”
• From columnist Robert Reich, you can view portions of an 18-minute video on Reich’s unending list of the worst things about the Trump presidency. Note: he recorded the video before Trump’s recent musings about invading Greenland, or cancelling the 2026 elections, or whatever other provocations occurred before you read this post.
• A local perspective from the newsletter of Dave Busiek, who was news director at KCCI-TV for 30 years:
It has been a long, punishing year. I knew it would be bad, but it’s been far worse than even this cynical, skeptical retired journalist imagined. Keeping up with the news is exhausting. Too many of our neighbors voted to put a thug back in the White House, for reasons I still can’t fathom. The thought of enduring three more years of this is almost unbearable.
Yet the assessments by Will, Moore, Reich, and Busiek, are not as bad as what can be inferred from Trump’s own comments—one from ten years ago and the other reported by New York Times earlier this month.
From January 23, 2016: Presidential candidate Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Trump the executioner
Back then, many people interpreted Trump’s claim about his supporters’ loyalty as a figure of speech. Nowadays it has a literal tinge to it. Trump casually suggested that U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy pilot, be executed for “seditious behavior.” What was the supposed sedition? Kelly said in a video that military service members should not heed illegal/unconstitutional orders.
The president also escaped accountability for repeatedly recommending in the spring of 2020 that people take hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to combat COVID-19. In hyping the drug, Trump asked rhetorically, “What have you got to lose?” A study published in 2024 linked the use of hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic to some 17,000 deaths here and in Europe. Forbes reported that Trump’s “advice directly contradicted guidance from the nation’s federal public health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Further, Trump’s cuts in foreign aid for health-related programs after he returned to office in 2025 may lead to millions of deaths by 2030.
Just this month, during an interview with the New York Times, a reporter asked Trump if there were “any limits on his powers” to strike or invade nations around the world. The president responded, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
What a troubling ten years, from saying he could get away with shooting a person in the street, to proclaiming he is limited only by his own ego-driven behavior. Trump has been president for five of those ten years.
The question now is how can we get through this year? One hopes the November 3 midterm elections may somehow restore a system of checks and balances to help heal us.
Otherwise we may continue playing Whack-A-Mole, as Trump’s awful cabinet secretaries and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority do the president’s bidding.
Way back in September 1787 at the end of the constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin had the answer for us in his reply to Elizabeth Willing Powel. She asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Cherish and work to meet that challenge—even if some Trump acolyte removes Franklin’s comment from a National Park website.
Top image of a European mole is from the collection of the Museum de Toulouse, available via Wikimedia Commons. Top image of President Donald Trump is cropped from an official White House photo by Daniel Torok, taken on July 22, 2025 during a meeting between Trump and President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. of the Phillippines.
