Editor's note
John Krull is director of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
Almost a century and a half ago, Lord Acton delivered an ageless truth.
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he wrote in 1887.
Many people think Acton meant only individual moral rot, the dissolution of the soul who lives a life unchecked by legal and ethical restraints.
He did mean that, but he also thought power—particularly absolute power—corrupted more than just the person or persons who possess it. It also warps systems and societies, distorting collective senses of right and wrong and transforming priorities in ways that defy both reality and common sense.
We’re seeing this disintegration of virtue and institutional standards of integrity at work now in both Indiana and the United States at large.
Here in the Hoosier state, we’re witness to the depressing spectacle of Lt. Gov.-elect Micah Beckwith picking a fight with college student journalists at The Indiana Daily Student. Beckwith, who won national attention by trying to make it harder for readers to access library books, complained on social media that the IDS was being mean to President-elect Donald Trump by highlighting on its front page some of the uncomplimentary things Trump’s former subordinates and allies have said about him.
Beckwith threatened in his post to cut funding for Indiana University if the college doesn’t shut the students up.
Beckwith and his running mate, Gov.-elect Mike Braun, are part of a Republican Party that controls every aspect of Indiana’s state government.
Indiana faces significant challenges.
To name just one, average incomes in our state trail behind three of our four neighbors—thank goodness for Kentucky—and have since before Beckwith was born. Two decades ago, when Mitch Daniels was elected governor and began what now will approach a quarter-century-long reign of Republican rule, he cited ending this inequity as one of the GOP’s top priorities.
Freshly granted power, Beckwith has made his first priority not addressing this persistent problem that stunts Hoosier opportunities and lives but shaking his fist at one of the state’s premier universities.
He must not be aware that college graduates, on average, earn in excess of $1 million more over the course of their working lives than non-college graduates do.
Either that, or he understands that figuring out how to help Hoosiers build better, more remunerative careers will require thought and hard work, while screaming the equivalent of “get off my lawn!” does not.
And he just doesn’t want to think that much or work that hard.
Because there is no one to hold Beckwith and the GOP accountable and keep them on task, the man who soon will be our lieutenant governor can start fights that serve no purpose and pay no attention to the fact that Hoosiers lead lesser lives than their neighbors to the north, east and west.
That’s power once again corrupting priorities.
At the national level, the once and future president has demanded that whoever will be the next majority leader of the U.S. Senate agree to recess appointments of Cabinet members as a condition for Trump’s support.
The demand makes no sense in terms of public policy or even politics.
Trump’s Republican Party controls the Senate. Any Senate Democrat up for reelection in 2026 is unlikely to choose a Cabinet confirmation as a hill he or she wants to die upon.
That means Trump’s appointments will sail through the Senate confirmation process.
Trump’s demand isn’t about policy, politics or personnel.
It’s about power.
It’s about bending the legislative branch to the will of the president-elect and eroding or destroying one more of the constitutional safeguards the founders of this nation built into our system of government.
Put another way, as he prepares to return to power, Donald Trump’s priority isn’t on improving the lives of the people who returned him to office but on figuring out ways to acquire still more power.
Most likely, he will get it.
The GOP long ago stopped being the party of Lincoln, a gathering of patriotic souls dedicated to building a stronger union, and now is fully, completely the party of Trump—and mini-Trumps such as Beckwith.
For them, power isn’t a means.
It’s an end.
Lord Acton spoke to that reality, too.
“Authority,” he wrote, “that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”
Amen.
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