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The Luck of Lansing
Trump’s post-election gambit was foiled and the system held. But the successful outcome had as much to do with luck than the law.
President Trump’s attempt to mess with the election integrity ended on Monday when the Michigan State Board of Canvassers certified the results of the election. What was unofficial is not official: Joe Biden won the Great Lake State’s 16 electoral votes, winning the popular vote by over 150,000 votes.
There is a lot of talk about how our system of laws held, keeping a wannabe authoritarian in check. I agree with this to a point, but I tend to think that as much as this was a triumph of the law, luck had a lot to do with this as well.
We want to think that history’s greatest moments have everything to do with great people who handle the crisis with great skill. That is part of the answer, but sometimes life hinges on a roll of the dice. Small actions by actors that many will forget can have as big an outcome as any of those great people. For example, when we think of the Cuban Missle Crisis, we might think of people like John and Robert Kennedy and Nikita Kruschev were the people who were able to sort through the mess and keep the world safe from nuclear war. But the peaceful end of the crisis was also the work of one Vasily Arkhipov.
