Charlie Neibergall/AP

Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the Republican Party of Iowa's 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, July 28, 2023.

At this point, Watergate looks downright quaint. 

Engulfed by scandal, President Richard Nixon was on the verge of impeachment and certain Senate conviction when he resigned, never to run for office again. His successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned Mr. Nixon in an act of mercy toward a broken man and a bid for national healing. 

That was nearly 50 years ago. Today, a former president under fire has a wholly different makeup, and the politics are diametrically opposite: A twice-impeached, four-times criminally indicted Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP’s presidential nomination next year. And it’s entirely possible he could win the 2024 election. He and President Joe Biden are locked in a statistical dead heat, polls show.

What’s more, Mr. Trump faces felony charges, both federally and in Georgia, that go right to the essence of democracy: alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In that light, presidential historians say, the United States is at a turning point, with two possible outcomes. 

The charges could prompt a “resurgence of democratic norms and principles,” says Lindsay Chervinsky, a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. 

Or we could be seeing the precursor to a presidency unlike any in American history, including Mr. Trump’s first term. If he does return to office, Dr. Chervinsky says, “he’s made it very clear that he will go after his political enemies and he will not be held accountable in any way by our democratic institutions.”

The idea of a second Trump administration, for now, remains a big “if.” It’s still early in the 2024 presidential cycle, and many voters haven’t fully tuned in – even including the fact that the first GOP debate is taking place Wednesday. Mr. Trump has said he will not participate. In addition, the timeline for his criminal cases remains fluid. Though two trial dates have been set for next year – one in March, another in May – it’s possible that pretrial motions could delay all four cases until after the election.

Add to the mix, too, the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel for Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over tax and gun charges. Questions persist over whether President Biden had knowledge of or benefited from his son’s business dealings. The president has denied the allegations. But a House GOP investigation has kept the issue in the news, deflecting some attention from Mr. Trump’s legal woes.

Still, the Biden administration – via Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – and the Georgia and Manhattan prosecutors have set a significant precedent with their indictments of the former president.

“In the same way Ford set one in ’74, this sets a very different one,” says Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. 

AP/File

President Gerald Ford signs a document granting former President Richard Nixon a full pardon at the White House in Washington, Sept. 8, 1974.

In particular, “the cumulative effect of all four, even the state and local indictments, will set a precedent that if you abuse your power, if you’re seen as going beyond what’s permissible, the law will come after you even after you’re president,” Dr. Zelizer says. 

Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments are: a Manhattan case over alleged hush payments to a porn star; a federal case over retention of classified documents; a federal case over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election; and a Georgia case over an alleged conspiracy to overturn that state’s 2020 election result. 

In all, Mr. Trump faces 91 charges, the potential for financial ruin, and the possibility that he goes to prison for the rest of his life. Mr. Trump is widely seen as wanting to regain the presidency in part so he can pardon himself if convicted – though that would not be possible in nonfederal cases, in Georgia and Manhattan. 

To many in the GOP primary electorate, most crucially Republicans who may have been inclined to back a fresh face in 2024, a sense of “piling on” appears to have engendered sympathy. Polls show Mr. Trump’s dominance of the GOP field picking up steam beginning in March, right as his first criminal indictment was about to land. 

But Mr. Trump’s resilience as a force in American politics goes well beyond renewed cries of “witch hunt.” It goes back to his debut as a presidential candidate in 2015, when he railed against Mexicans “bringing crime” into the U.S. and American jobs leaving the country. 

At the time, many political observers thought Mr. Trump would flame out, but in fact, he was remaking the Republican Party before our very eyes, with his performative skills and message of conservative populism. 

Just 2 ½ years prior, the GOP ticket was led by avatars of old-style Republicanism, dominated by fiscally conservative elites: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. 

Suddenly, the watchwords were “America First” and “build the wall,” and working-class white voters switched parties in droves. Today, many of those same voters are among Mr. Trump’s most avid supporters. 

“His appeal never surprised me,” says Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and not a Trump fan. “He was the person who actually was listening or somehow intuited what this segment of voters cared about.”

Politics is a market, Mr. Olsen says. “Eventually somebody figures out that there’s an underserved constituency, and they serve it – and that changes things.” 

From former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right-wing populism is a global phenomenon, and Mr. Trump fits right in. 

But right-wing populism, in and of itself, doesn’t present a threat to American democracy, he says. It’s in the criminalization of political opposition – and the demise of the idea of a “loyal opposition.” 

“If you cannot see the opposition as loyal,” Mr. Olsen says, “then logic drives you to suppress the opposition in ways that mean they can’t win. That’s the threat to American democracy.”

President Joe Biden’s trilateral summit held at Camp David Friday with the leaders of Japan and South Korea could set the stage for a more secure and free Pacific region, while revitalizing America’s Asia presence at a time when many have concluded it is waning.

Indeed, “The Camp David Summit” has the potential to become shorthand for a watershed moment for East Asian security and diplomatic relations, some U.S. officials and regional experts say, in a way similar to how “Camp David Accords” captured a key moment of progress in Middle East peace.

But the question going forward will be whether the one-day summit – hailed by the White House as a “historic first” intending to “institutionalize” deepening relations among the three countries – can live up to its promise.

“The word that’s been bandied about by the Biden administration and others is ‘historic,’ that this was the first time President Biden was hosting foreign leaders at Camp David, that this was a pivotal moment in assuring that [Japan and South Korea] will continue to be much more forward-looking together,” says Shihoko Goto, director for geoeconomics and Indo-Pacific enterprise at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“The big test will be if, no matter what election results we have in coming years, the spirit and letter of this summit live on. If this survives post-Biden,” she adds, “then this really is historic – for Asia, but also in solidifying that the U.S. continues to be a broker of peace and international cooperation in the world.”

If one is to assess the question of the summit’s promise simply by the concrete steps agreed to by Mr. Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the answer might seem to be a slam-dunk “Yes.”

The three leaders committed to holding such three-way summits at least once a year. They agreed to hold more joint military exercises around the Korean Peninsula, and to create a hotline to warn one another of sudden security threats, such as North Korean missile launches. 

Andrew Harnik/AP

President Joe Biden, center, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, and South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, attend a meeting, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. With Mr. Biden are Secretary of State Antony Blinken, center left, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, center right.

But another plausible answer is more circumspect.

That’s in part because of concerns that a future U.S. president might not be as dogged in supporting and nurturing America’s alliances as Mr. Biden, as Ms. Goto suggests. Many U.S. allies – including in Asia – remain spooked by former President Donald Trump’s disdain for alliances and by the prospect of a return of that perspective to the White House.

But an equal cause for doubts about the trilateral arrangement’s success stem from concerns about the durability of recently blossoming high-level relations between Japan and South Korea.

Despite fits and starts over recent decades at improving relations between Japan and South Korea, the painful history they share – Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to the end of World War II – has kept resentment of Japan alive in Korea and repeatedly quashed its political leaders’ efforts at rapprochement.

Just two years ago, Japanese and South Korean diplomats refused to take part in a joint press conference at the State Department.

President Yoon is credited by U.S. officials – all the way up to the president – with rekindling efforts at entente with Japan since taking office in May 2022. The Korean leader has gone farther than recent predecessors, agreeing to attend in March the first bilateral summit with Japan in 12 years, and to drop a number of reparations demands related to forced labor during the Japanese occupation.

And now he has embraced the Camp David summit and its objective of building a durable framework for trilateral relations.

Analysts took it as a good sign that President Yoon chose a speech in Seoul last week marking the 78th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 to highlight the Camp David summit and a future of closer ties to Japan.

He said the summit would “set a new milestone in trilateral cooperation contributing to peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Prime Minister Kishida also offered soothing words in the lead-up to the summit, saying his country has taken “the lessons of history deeply into our hearts” even as it solidifies its partnerships to deter any adversary threatening to “repeat the devastation of war.”

But are Koreans, and the Japanese, ready to follow their leaders in turning away from the past and focusing on the future?

Perhaps tellingly, Mr. Yoon faced immediate blowback from various sectors of Korean society over his choice of venue for hailing the Camp David summit and its promise of closer trilateral ties – and thus with Japan.

The rapprochement with Japan is generally well-viewed among elites in South Korea, experts note, but less certain is how ready the general public is to move on from the past.

The Yoon Japan policy “is a very top-down approach to diplomatic relations, but what is less certain is whether, at the grassroots level, there is also movement forward on some of these very emotional historical issues,” says Ms. Goto.

“These sensitive wartime grievances may have been shelved, but they haven’t been solved,” she adds, “so it seems the topic will remain a big challenge in any post-Yoon administration.”

Lee Jin-man/AP

Protesters shout slogans during a rally in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023, ahead of the trilateral Camp David summit. Whether the South Korean public can overcome historic resentments against Japan is an issue challenging the improved ties.

The other critical factor in trilateral relations going forward will be China.

China was not even mentioned in the summit’s statement. But that was by design to ease concerns, primarily for the Koreans, that the Camp David initiative not be seen as directed at China – which is the top trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.

Beijing has been vocal in its opposition to tighter relations among the three Camp David partners, insisting they aim to create a “mini-NATO.”

Biden administration officials have insisted that the security framework agreed to by the three countries does not aim to become an alliance on the order of NATO – the security accords the U.S. has bilaterally with each Asian ally are stronger than what the three committed to together, for example. Rather, they say, the Camp David “principles” are about enhancing the expanding economic and military security arrangements the U.S. is pursuing across the Indo-Pacific.

Still, an unconvinced China might only be encouraged to take its own steps to counter the U.S., some analysts say, leading to a buildup of opposing security alliances.

“Whatever the U.S. intent, Beijing will regard Biden’s effort as involving the creation of an East Asian NATO [and] that in turn raises the question of whether Beijing will be deterred or provoked,” says Rajan Menon, director of grand strategy at Defense Priorities, a realist foreign policy think tank in Washington.

One outcome Washington might end up with, he adds, is that “China might increase its military ties with Russia and North Korea.”

How China responds to the Camp David summit concerns all three summit participants, others note, but it remains of particular concern to the two Asian members of the threesome.

“Is China just going to pursue its own military buildup, or will it respond to the security cooperation this summit promises by coming up with a similar diplomatic framework to counter the U.S.?” asks Ms. Goto.

“I wouldn’t say concerns about that put the light of day between the U.S. and the other two when it comes to China, but I do think Washington has to keep in mind the geography,” she adds. “For Japan and South Korea, China is right there. For the U.S., it’s not so close.”

Firecrackers, noisemakers, and cheers pierced the night sky Sunday as Guatemalans descended on plazas across the country to celebrate the resounding victory of Bernardo Arévalo, a sociologist and member of Congress seen as a threat to the political establishment.

“Hope won,” José López, a retail worker, says excitedly while on his way to one of the impromptu celebrations in Guatemala City. “People are tired of all the corruption. We are fed up,” he says.

Mr. Arévalo, the Movimiento Semilla party’s presidential contender, garnered 58% of the vote. His rival, former first lady Sandra Torres, obtained 37.2%, but she has yet to concede as her Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza party questions the election proceedings.

Just a few months ago, most in Guatemala knew little about Mr. Arévalo, aside from his famous last name. (His father was the country’s first democratically elected president, ushering in a decadelong “democratic spring” in 1945.) But three candidates, including two popular outsiders, were disqualified from the first-round election on questionable grounds, paving the way for Mr. Arévalo’s surprise second-place victory back in June. Brazen judicial moves targeting his party only galvanized voters further, observers say.

There are high expectations from the voters who backed him. They expressed a desire for change from the years of systemic corruption and weakening of institutional independence that have come to define modern politics here. His presidential plans include proposals to combat corruption, improve access to public education and health care, and foment equitable economic growth.

But analysts say Mr. Arévalo’s first challenges will be the certification of the runoff results and getting sworn into office in January. He is expected to face fierce political and judicial backlash in the weeks and months ahead; many here say threats to Guatemala’s democracy are far from over.

“This is a turning point for Guatemalan democracy,” says Gabriela Carrera, a political science professor at the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City. In the coming weeks and months, “the defense of democracy by Guatemalan society, both organized and unorganized,” will play a critical role in ensuring the public’s choice at the ballot box is respected.

A done deal?

Mr. Arévalo’s unexpected success in the first round of voting in June spurred swift backlash from other parties and the public prosecutor’s office. Legal challenges and criminal investigations into how his party was officially registered five years ago were widely considered to be politically motivated. Both Movimiento Semilla and the electoral tribunal, which certified the results of the first-round vote bringing Mr. Arévalo to the runoff, were targeted with raids and arrest warrants this summer.

More interference is likely around the corner. Three days before the runoff, special anti-impunity prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche spoke about several election-related cases, including an ongoing investigation into allegedly fraudulent signatures in Movimiento Semilla’s registration as a party. Arrest warrants and other measures in the wake of the runoff should not be discounted, he told reporters.

“The goal of sabotaging the electoral process is still present,” says Renzo Rosal, a Guatemalan political analyst. Some political and economic elites may try to maintain a grip on power, no matter how blatant – or undemocratic – their efforts. “They seek to derail the process, even though it’s after the fact,” says Mr. Rosal.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei congratulated Mr. Arévalo on his victory and invited him to a meeting once the runoff results are official. But the certification of the election results will be key, analysts say. Ms. Torres and her party repeatedly questioned the validity of Movimiento Semilla and the election process in the lead-up to the runoff, setting the stage for a refusal to recognize Sunday’s outcome.

Pilar Olivares/Reuters

Guatemalan anti-graft candidate Bernardo Arévalo reacts following his victory in the presidential runoff election in Guatemala City, Aug. 20, 2023.

Mr. Arévalo acknowledged “ongoing political persecution carried out by institutions, prosecutors, and judges who have been corruptly co-opted” in his victory speech Sunday night. He said details on his future Cabinet will be announced soon.

Naming a Cabinet may have repercussions. “The day people are announced as potential Cabinet members or people who could be in key positions, those names will be put in the crosshairs of the prosecutor’s office,” says Mr. Rosal.

Seeking change

Voters trickled in and out of a polling station tucked away in a parking lot underneath Guatemala City’s central plaza almost imperceptibly Sunday afternoon, while the plaza bustled with families and vendors.

“We hope this next government brings about changes,” says Mariela Contreras, a Guatemala City resident, after walking out of the polling station. Successive governments have done nothing to improve life in Guatemala, she says. “They have all failed us.”

Mr. Arévalo and his running mate Karin Herrera, a biologist, are not short on proposals for change. Their 64-page government plan addresses everything from structural causes of chronic childhood malnutrition to cracking down on anti-competitive business practices.

Anti-corruption measures were front and center on the campaign trail. A few of them are at the top of Mr. Arévalo’s list of 24 priorities for his first 100 days in office: identifying and reporting corruption cases, establishing a new code of ethics and transparency for government officials, and ensuring information on all government expenditure – “every cent” – is available to the public.

Access to education and health, including expansion and improvement of coverage, is another cornerstone of his plans. In light of high medication costs, he’s promised to create a state company with a network of public pharmacies.

Mr. Arévalo and Ms. Herrera’s plan mentions Indigenous people – who comprise close to half the country’s population – in relation to inclusion and equitable social spending. Like most other party platforms in the country, though, it does not address historical racism, says Victoria Tubin, a sociologist who is of the Maya Kaqchikel people.

Some traditional governance authorities and Indigenous women’s organizations have expressed interest in dialogue with the party during the transition period, says Ms. Tubin.

Job training and creation programs, significant investment in road and highway infrastructure, and the addition of 12,000 officers to the national police force are just a few more points in Movimiento Semilla’s wide-ranging plan.

The feasibility of it all is based, in part, on a projected annual increase in tax revenues without raising tax rates, says Lourdes Molina, a senior economist at the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies. Instead, the party plans to improve the tax administration system, reduce evasion, and go after customs fraud. While income inequality in Guatemala is among the highest in Latin America, its tax burden is among the lowest and consumers bear the brunt of it. The country loses an estimated $1 billion in revenue annually due to evasion of the value-added tax alone.

“The availability of resources is what determines whether government plans will just end up being campaign promises or whether they will become realities,” says Ms. Molina.

Challenges ahead

Mr. Arévalo’s administration will find few allies in other branches of government. Top courts are stacked against anti-corruption crusaders like him, and Consuelo Porras, the country’s controversial attorney general, is in office until 2026.

In Congress, Movimiento Semilla will hold 23 of 160 seats next year. The current ruling party, Vamos, and the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza party both won more seats and have formed an informal alliance with several other parties in recent years.

What “we have been calling the ruling alliance is going to continue and will even become stronger,” says Mr. Rosal, the political analyst. “We’re easily talking about at least 110 or 120 congressional representatives, so it is an extremely strong majority that will dominate Congress, its executive committee, and key commissions,” he says.

Should Movimiento Semilla lose its status as a registered party, its elected lawmakers would take office as independents. They would be barred from presiding over congressional commissions, among other roles. A judge ordered its status be revoked in July, but the electoral tribunal refused to comply given it is illegal to cancel a party while an electoral process is underway. The country’s top court agreed, putting those efforts on hold until October.

“The other important thing is that it would bog down Semilla leadership in legal struggles,” says Ms. Carrera, the political scientist. “The party’s most important leaders at the moment are elected congressional representatives,” she says.

For now, officials cannot suspend the party, but that doesn’t mean they won’t pursue other measures in the meantime. “There is a series of dynamics that we are unable to see but that is even more dangerous,” says Ms. Carrera.

“Definitely what is feared” by those currently in power, she adds, “is the will of the Guatemalan people.”

He eats microwave meals, weed-whacks his neighborhood’s overgrown grass, rides a Harley and the Washington Metro – and earlier this year traveled to the Ukrainian capital to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Welcome to the glamorous life of a United States senator, courtesy of Angus King’s Instagram feed.

“Here’s one of [Democratic Sen.] Tammy Duckworth looking out the back of a helicopter in Baghdad,” he says, scrolling through his account after a Monitor reporter asked him about it. I’ve got a new hero, he wrote after watching the former Black Hawk helicopter pilot circle the place where she had been shot down 15 years earlier, losing both legs.

“There I am raking leaves,” says the Maine independent, adding that it’s important for people to realize that senators do yardwork and use airports. 

Wait, what – no private jet? 

Far from it. 

@anguskingmaine

Normally Senator King flies coach back to Maine, but when his flight was canceled (after sitting on the runway for more than an hour) in June 2019, he joined up with four other passengers he'd never met and drove a rental car through the night, taking turns driving and chipping in for gas.

“One of the funniest ones was when my plane got grounded in Washington,” he says, coming across a June 2019 post when he banded together with two software engineers, a college professor, and a lawyer he’d never met to make the trip back home. “We rented a car and drove overnight,” he says. That post prompted one of his biggest responses ever, he says.  

The Maine senator may not be the king of Instagram – he has just 32,400 followers, compared with, say, the 8.5 million of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His down-to-earth approach is more the speed of Maine lobstermen trolling for crustaceans than politicos scrolling for scuttlebutt. But in a way that resonates with many amid the craggy coasts and whispering pines of Maine, his understated commentary on Washington and the people he represents challenges the pervasive cynicism about politicians and their polarizing use of platforms from Twitter to TikTok. 

“You would almost look at it and think it’s not even a politician’s social media account. It could just be someone who visits D.C. often,” says Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida. “But I think that’s probably a bit reflective of him as a politician.” 

@anguskingmaine

"Another in the Glamorous Life of a U.S. Senator series," joked Senator King six months into the pandemic, when he posted this photo of himself trimming the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of his Washington home. It was a good excuse to get out of the house after endless Zoom meetings.

In an industry often associated with big egos and a myopic focus on one’s own interests, Senator King shows an aptitude for thoughtful observation. He takes an almost childlike delight in discovering a view of the Washington Monument through a crack in the elevator doors, thanks to a window in the Senate elevator shaft that he never noticed. He revels in sunsets or a Maine back road lined by snow-dusted evergreens that provide a respite from politics.

And he defies the downward pull of the social media vortex, pulling back the curtain on the humanity of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle – here’s Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine playing the harmonica and Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” – while also being frank about their disagreements.

Not everyone is a fan; when he posted a dawn photo taken from the Capitol after a 25-hour nonstop session to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021, one commenter wrote, “WHY DID YOU VOTE AGAINST RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE HOW OUT OF TOUCH ARE YOU.” The senator pointed him to a statement on his website. Hope it helps explain, he added. 

Indeed, beyond the rainbows and kittens, there is often a substantive and sober tone – whether he’s warning about climate change or musing about the health of our democratic institutions. 

Early in his career, he worked as a staffer on the Hill in the 1970s, when senators lived in town with their families and got to know each other. Now most leave on Thursday afternoons and don’t come back until late Monday. Apart from the bipartisan Senate prayer breakfast, there are hardly ever any opportunities to just get to know each other, explains the former Democrat who switched to independent when he ran for governor in 1994, but still caucuses with the Democratic Party in Congress. So he started hosting impromptu dinners, picking up ribs, beans, and coleslaw and inviting a few fellow senators – some Democrats, some Republicans – over to his 908-square-foot home in Washington. 

@anguskingmaine

Sen. Angus King featured this photo of dirty dishes in a 2018 Instagram post about his efforts to get to know congressional colleagues by inviting them to meals.

“You can almost see the wheels turning and see the person say, ‘Oh, this person isn’t the monster I thought they were,’” says Senator King in a hallway interview in May, a few weeks after holding his first post-pandemic dinner. 

But he runs out of time looking for the post he really wanted to share – a photo of dirty dishes after one such gathering before the pandemic. It was his creative way of capturing the moment without infringing on the privacy necessary to foster bipartisan ties.

Here it is, further down in his feed, April 23, 2018: a takeout container with a couple of ribs sitting atop aluminum foil, a nearly empty jar of sauce, and dirty plates crammed onto a small counter. 

What you see here is the remains of tonight’s edition of my personal project to make a dent in this unfortunate reality, he wrote, explaining how the lack of trust makes it hard to reach the compromises necessary to get things done.

“Beautiful dishes, sad truth,” commented one follower. 

Another took a more hopeful view: “Thank you for bringing sanity to Washington.”

Reuters

Supporters of anti-graft presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo celebrate following his victory in the presidential run-off election, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Aug. 20.

The presidential elections that unfolded in Guatemala and Ecuador yesterday each had its own brand of intimidation – political interference in one, violence in the other. Yet in both countries, voters were undeterred. The surprising results they set in motion underscore the effect of individual integrity in neutralizing fear.

“Honesty will win,” said Yaku Pérez, the candidate from the Alianza Claro Que Se Puede (Of Course We Can Alliance), a minor party in Ecuador. He described the vote as laying “the foundations of the new Ecuador.”

As in many countries in Latin America in recent years, people in Ecuador and Guatemala are looking for solutions to entrenched corruption and the criminal activities of gangs and drug cartels. According to the opinion survey AmericasBarometer, 65% of people across the region say that more than half of all politicians are corrupt.

That frustration helps to explain what voters in Guatemala saw in Bernardo Arévalo, the son of a beloved former president who led an upstart campaign to victory in yesterday’s runoff ballot. Mr. Arévalo is the leader of a young reformist party. He pledged to reverse what one political analyst described as the systematic dismantling of public institutions under outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei.

“I want a new Guatemala,” Victorina Hernández, a teacher, told The Wall Street Journal after voting. “I want a lot of changes. No corruption, better education, health and society. No more hungry children.” During a campaign in which state prosecutors disqualified more prominent anti-corruption candidates, Mr. Arévalo has said his first priority would be to restore judicial independence.

Corruption also overshadows Ecuador, where President Guillermo Lasso called an early election to avoid a potential impeachment trial over graft allegations and has vowed to resign. But the election there was marred by violence, including the assassination of a mayor and an anti-corruption presidential candidate who promised to take on drug cartels. At least two candidates wore bulletproof vests to cast their ballots.

Despite that atmosphere of fear, however, the election showed the power of public appeals for honest government. Like their counterparts in Guatemala, enough voters in Ecuador backed a young reformist candidate, Daniel Noboa, to force a runoff in October.

For Latin Americans to break from the “vicious cycle” of corruption, wrote former Costa Rican Vice President Kevin Casas-Zamora in The New York Times, they “need to build institutions such as robust political parties, independent judiciaries, impartial electoral authorities and strong legal protections for press freedom and civic activism.”

In Ecuador and Guatemala, voters may be charting a way forward. As Mr. Arévalo said last night, the participation in the election “is an act of defense of democracy and at this moment it meant an act of courage.” Backing integrity over fear marks a first step in recovering the civic spaces of self-government.