Dear Sen. Gardner,
My family just returned from a trip that included a visit to your D.C. office and we took the opportunity to share some of our views. Your staff was very accommodating and included my wife and I on a capitol tour that was very informative.
While we were at the Capitol and surrounding area, we took in many of the sites relating to our country’s history that featured stories of leadership that have shaped the democratic institutions that we enjoy today: Jefferson’s defense of a free press; the documents making up the Constitution which set up the separation of powers between branches of government; the Supreme Court justices and their commitment to protection of the citizenry from governmental overreach; the Maryland State House where Washington voluntarily gave up military power to recognize a civilian government.
The irony is that while we were in all these places and marveled at the genius of those who worked to set up these institutions, we felt we were watching in real time the effort of the president to tear them to pieces and send them to the scrap heap of history.
Then we learn that our president has spent an hour on the phone with a principle adversary who has been documented to play a part in targeting these institutions. Rather than backing up these institutions and recognizing the attack for what it is, we get a complete rejection that any of these events even happened. This is despite the two-year-long effort to document these intrusions of a foreign government in our electoral system. Rest assured that the person that the president turned to in this time of crisis has no other interest higher than assuring that American institutions and our leadership role in the world will fail.
I haven’t heard a word of condemnation from your office denouncing these shameless attacks nor backing our democratic institutions. I fear that if we don’t act soon, future generations of Americans won’t have the benefit of these institutions that so many have sacrificed to protect and our necessary for our way of life.
Phil Overeynder
Aspen