Trump should not be barred from running for office

Recently, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that due to Section Three of the 14th Amendment, former President Donald Trump would be ineligible to run for a second presidential term, at least within Colorado. As a result, a heated debate has sprung up 1) over whether that portion of the Constitution even applies to Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 and people running for elected, rather than appointed, offices, and 2) even if it does, if the Constitution or elections should decide whether Trump becomes president again.
I have discussed what I think about Biden in the past. Biden is someone who gets called old in many respects – in important respects unfairly. Even if that be the case, perception is reality as many Democrats who oppose a second Biden term point out. Even so, his administration has had a host of legislative successes, such as the largest ever amount of funding passed for the purposes of climate investment, among other things. He is far from a perfect president: I would point to his policy of arming Israel with weapons that are for anything but self-defense – weapons their powerful military hardly needs – and others would point to his border policy, but I think most liberals and many moderate conservatives would say he is a normal president, for better or worse.
On the other hand, Trump is abnormal. Although some would say that is a good change of pace, I disagree. In my column about his mishandling of classified information, I discussed why I believe his vanity and carelessness is a genuine threat to national security. I see his desire to showcase power in dictatorial ways as something that could hurt the men and women in our intelligence services and military, more so than Biden sending weapons we do not use anyway to Ukraine. I see Trump’s lack of understanding about the world and our home – especially the law – as a danger to the institutions that we hold dear, even if you think he has a better economic agenda than Biden.
You may assume that means I support these challenges to his eligibility to run for president. I do not. I do not know the specific legal arguments regarding the exact words of the 14th Amendment and how those words can be interpreted. It is not my job to argue that. Even if Trump did violate the original intent of that amendment, I think it would be healthier for our democracy if we did not leverage it to get him kicked out of the race. I say let him run against Biden in the traditional electoral process – even if this election looks like no other election ever held in the U.S. before. Let them use their arguments to win over voters, whether their words are their own words or their advisors’ words.
If one of his criminal cases decides he broke a law that does have a precedent of enforcement, then my opinion changes. For example, the classified documents case would be a foregone conclusion if someone not of Trump’s stature was facing the same charges with even more tenuous evidence. However, until that happens, it is most important to have the American people see and engage in an active democracy. We do not begin to fix the divide of this country inside a courtroom, and whatever short-term benefit may come from using the 14th Amendment against him will be more than outweighed by the increasing number of people who believe either 1) that we are already no longer a democracy or 2) believe that democracy does not work for them and therefore support authoritarian measures. Every time someone turns to either of those beliefs, our odds of surviving as a democratic republic decrease, and the dangers to our most important freedoms increase.