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I could write my own treatise on Trump’s first 100 days, or I could just link to one that already says exactly what I think written by an eminent University of Chicago trained economist and Hoover Institute fellow named John Cochrane instead.
For today, I choose the latter option. The only addition I would make is that he should look no further than Cochrane when appointing a Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.
I am reminded of this Far Side cartoon every time I think of the Trump versus Clinton election circus we are doomed to endure for the next few months, followed by 4 years of whatever we get on the back-end of it.
On principle, I believe that voting for the Presidency should never have become, nor is it currently, a binary choice between lacklustre candidates put forward by two parties. I say this only to make the point that the Far Side cartoon, while humorous and somewhat appropriate, isn’t entirely accurate given that we can freely vote for other options or choose not to vote at all. Much of my actual lament today is that the office is as powerful as it currently is in the first place. If the executive office was relegated to its proper constitutional role, this would be far less consequential of an exercise. It is the legislature, through reasoned and deliberative process, that was established with the preponderance of governmental powers and placed in the pre-eminent Article I of the U.S. Constitution. This was a wise decision by the founders, who intended to promote the durability of individual liberty through due process of deliberative and participatory government, as I indicate in another post. This legislative responsibility has been eroded greatly through various executive branch usurpations (i.e the vast proliferation of unaccountable executive agencies) as well as a judiciary that has strayed beyond its boundaries of interpreting law as devised in the Constitution and through laws promulgated through the legislature to a modern-day role in actively creating their own laws out of the judge’s’ own political and personal preferences.
All that being said, my ideological principles don’t matter much when the reality is that one of these individuals will become President of the United States, a fact that I can only find comic relief in the Monty Python scene in which the “Constitutionalist” peasant indicates to King Arthur, “well, I didn’t vote for you…” I picture myself in the next four years as an increasing malcontent who mutters throughout the day, “well, I didn’t vote for you…” every time a poor decision is made or every time something else surfaces that demonstrates their unsavory characters. Actually, upon re-watching the entire scene, I think there is a good deal one could use out of the clip as a parody of modern American government.
And while I don’t agree with the enthusiasm in which the author takes in not ever voting, as I still believe that it is an important right to cherish, there is much in a recent commentary in which he quotes David Boaz posted on the Cafe Hayek blog that I think is spot on. I quote the main points that I agree with below:
I’ve heard libertarians say, “We know how bad Hillary is, so the mysterious Trump is a better bet.” But we do know much about Trump. He’s been clear and consistent on a few issues: banning and deporting Mexicans, building a wall around America, banning Muslims, and taking a sledgehammer to the world’s most important trading relationship (between the United States and China). He’s indifferent to federal spending and against entitlement reform. He thinks he doesn’t need advisers or policies or principles. He has no earthly idea what he thinks about taxes, abortion, minimum wages, debt, health care, or most other issues. Most disturbingly, he shows disdain for Congress and the Constitution.
A few libertarians have said that war is the greatest threat to life and liberty, and Trump is less hawkish than Clinton and most of the other Republican candidates. True, he has criticized the Iraq war and nation building and even read a speech proclaiming that “unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct.” But he has also promised to “bomb the s– out of” ISIS and “take out their families.” And his ignorance, anger, and impulsiveness about trade and immigration would surely make for rocky international relations.
One of the most useful and simple frameworks I have ever received is a concept I gained in a decision making course taught by the late Professor Kent Womack, one of my favorite professors at Dartmouth College and whom I credit with my own enhanced appreciation for understanding human frailties and the need for humility when approaching large organizations and intractable problems.
I believe this framework can largely explain the appalling lack of praiseworthy and honorable choices that the two-party system has left us with in this election cycle. Since the seemingly going defunct GOP Party is something I am much more familiar with, I can more readily speak to it and fit it within the framework. Trump won most of the primary races by racking up a plurality amongst split votes, but rarely did he win an above 50% majority. His negative ratings, approaching 65%, is unprecedented in presidential election history. I have little doubt in my mind that had he begun this race with fewer choices representing the typical established Republican base, he would not be where he is today. Imagine a scenario in which his only opposition to begin the race was in the persons of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorina. The race would have likely consolidated on one of those as an alternative to Trump a lot more rapidly than the process of the agonizing and costly whittling down of votes that left us with Cruz and Trump standing in the end. Given this likelihood, Trump’s unconventional campaign and dishonourable and intemperate personality fits the table in the “Good Luck” category. The real challenge for the GOP going forward is that Trump has internalized this “Good Luck” outcome as a direct result of his own special genius – putting himself in the “Justly Rewarded” category, when the truth is much closer to what Bret Stephens from the Wall Street Journal articulated as rolling three double 6’s in a row in backgammon and believing it is a result of your own skill. Trump’s blustery and undisciplined strategy in any other year would result in a campaign going down in a tremendous ball of flames, and may still do so, but this is no ordinary year. In this great tragicomedy, his opponent on the other side is almost as tragically flawed as he is.
This brings me to my own observations of the Democratic side, where even a pre-ordained coronation has taken a tremendously long time given that the Democratic buyer’s remorse continues to play itself out. For such a party stalwart and established candidate to take so long to take control of the primary says as much about the influence of Sanders and his avowedly democratic socialist ideas as much as it says about Clinton’s weakness. (On the topic of Sanders, Daniel Henninger of the WSJ has an insightful piece of the impact of the Sanders’ candidacy in revealing what was already latent in the Democratic Party lurch to the left). Indeed, Clinton’s own negative ratings, which are hovering close to 60%, are not too far off from Trump’s numbers. She would probably be bogged down by Clinton family scandals of the past (cattle futures, Whitewater, Bill’s various relations with staffers and interns), but the fact that Clinton has ongoing current scandals has added additional combustible fuel to the fire.
Alas, one of the conundrums of the Democratic Party is that they lack a deep bench of political talent, having been denuded of a fresh crop of intellectual blood coming from state governorships and state legislatures where Republicans have quietly built majority strongholds in a majority of states. Even with a less developed politician farm system, to use a baseball analogy, the lack of existing party grandees such as Joe Biden, John Kerry, or even an independent run ruled out by Independent Michael Bloomberg has gifted Hillary Clinton with a relatively easy and open path to the Democratic ticket. That being said, Clinton’s gifts as a disciplined (if not exciting) campaigner and politician is leagues above that of Donald Trump, but her own glaring weaknesses likely mean that if she went into this race with a formidable opponent that lacked any of her baggage, she is likely already on the sidelines by now.
But here we are as Americans, captive of bad luck and this destined to be stuck with two hard to love and hard to respect out of any moral and virtue sense candidates that present to us little compelling or worthy choice to hold our highest office in the land. The leader of the free world comes down to two unsavory choices who are where they are today out of a historic combination of bad luck from two parties colliding together. Of course, there are other options and this race does not have to be bi-polar. I will be casting a ballot for the Libertarian Party this cycle, but my reasons for this is a topic of exploration for another day.
Bret Stephens has a biting critique of the GOP in his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. Stephens, as ever, is able to criticize the party that he aligns with most often with eloquence and forcefulness that I admire. The GOP’s myopia and fixation, to say nothing of the lack of economic soundness and adherence to liberty, small government, and plain moral decency – was a primary source of frustration of mine with the party long before the rise of Trump. The combination of stances on immigration, free trade, and Trump are the main reasons I will be casting a Presidential Libertarian ballot this election season.
Some of the piquant highlights of the article, in which Stephens addresses common canards leveled against Mexico and Mexican immigration are as follows:
Mexico is a failed state. Mexico’s struggles with drug cartels—whose existence is almost entirely a function of America’s appetite for dope—are serious and well known. So are its deep-seated institutional weaknesses, especially the police forces that collude with the cartels and terrorize rural areas.
Then again, Mexico’s 2014 homicide rate of about 16 murders per 100,000 means that it is about as dangerous as Philadelphia (15.9) and considerably safer than Miami (19.2) or Atlanta (20.5). Are these “failed cities” that you don’t dare visit and that should be walled off from the rest of America?
Mexico steals U.S. jobs. Donald Trump recently resurrected this chestnut by inveighing against Nabisco and Ford for shifting production to Mexico from high-cost Illinois and Michigan. Never mind that one reason Ford made the move was to take advantage of Mexico’s free-trade agreements with the European Union and other countries, meaning that opposition to free trade is the very thing that drives business abroad. Then again, Mexico is the second-largest purchaser of U.S. products; the Wilson Center’s Christopher Wilson has estimated that “six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico.” That is especially true for border states. ‘Mexico is the top export destination for five states: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and New Hampshire, and is the second most important market for another 17 states across the country.’
Illegal immigrants are a drain on the system. This whopper should be sold at Burger King, since illegal immigrants pay billions in state and local taxes, along with about $15 billion a year to Social Security—the benefits of which they are unlikely ever to get back. Entire U.S. industries, agriculture above all, depend on illegal migrants, without whom fruits and vegetables would simply rot in the field.
If there is a drain, it’s Mexicans going home—roughly one million returnees between 2009 and 2014, according to the Pew Research Center, outpacing the number of Mexicans moving north by about 140,000. That owes something to growth and stability in the Mexican economy, which is largely a function of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
This makes Mr. Trump’s opposition to Nafta all the more misjudged. Without it, Mexico could easily have become Venezuela, run by an Hugo Chávez-like strongman, that would have posed a real threat to U.S. security, as opposed to the one in Mr. Trump’s imagination.
A recent Wall Street Journal oped by Joseph Epstein asked the question on the minds of most Americans viewing this tragicomic circus going on that we call the Presidential race: “These five are the best that we can do?”
Readers of this blog and my close friends recognize that over the last few years I have turned Greek and Roman history and philosophy and finding the modern equivalents into an interest and hobby. In this vein, Epstein quotes the ancient Roman general and politician Sulla when he opens with, ““There are some systems which naturally take control out of the hands of good men. There are even some which necessarily put it in the hands of bad ones.” So it seems with the American two-party system of primary selection and election process of the leader of the free world. What was historically an expectation of leadership, experience, character, substance, and virtue holding preeminent roles in the winning of votes has devolved into a vulgar race to the bottom based on celebrity and style for the job. Anyone who cynically doubts my previous point about winning the office based on substance needs to go back and read George Washington’s musings and writings on the office of the Presidency as well as the Lincoln Douglas debates and compare and contrast these grand idealistic visions to Trump talking about the size of his genitals to recognize the depth of the abyss we have sunken into.
Epstein takes aim at our media culture as a primary culprit of this devolution. The main thesis of his oped is as follows:
The media and Internet are the major instruments of contemporary political degradation. The media were once more restrained, operating under a largely self-imposed control. During the Kennedy administration, journalists agreed not to photograph the president smoking or playing golf; as for his high jinks above stairs in the White House, that was never up for public discussion. In earlier years, no reporters brought up the lady friends of Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower, and focusing on FDR’s physical incapacity during wartime was unthinkable.
Things changed under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His position on the Vietnam War went contrary to that of most members of the media, who decided that opening the president to attack was not only feasible but honorable. The media’s adversarial role intensified under Richard Nixon. After Watergate, “investigative journalism” became one of the heroic professions. What investigative journalists chiefly investigated was malfeasance and above all scandal.
The advent of the Internet made this all the worse. The Internet is without an ethical standard. On it anyone can say anything—and usually does. Donald Trump has added to the demeaning quality of the proceedings by using the Internet—those endless insulting tweets—and attracting press and television with his steady stream of attacks on the personal lives of his opponents.
While I tend to agree that the media is a perfectly culpable standard bearer and complicit in vulgarity and sophomoric coverage and analysis, I believe that they are a mere reflection of the overall culture that we have become, which is a culture at large that is fueling the demand for “bread and circuses” to fill our appetites, as the Roman satirist Juvenal would quip. The media is simply following reader and viewer demand, rather than a media conspiracy to dumb down our preferences. We can’t let ourselves off of the hook and blame the media for our own vulgarity and mediocrity.
Furthermore, I don’t believe the American appetite for savagery is unique in the historic perspective. We can look to ancient Greece for the same lessons. In Plato’s Republic, much of the effort of his philosophical writing is towards defining the ideal city that is led by people of great virtue and character. When asked why such people of character so rarely choose to enter politics, Plato, using Socrates as the speaker, offers up the poignant observation that, “Now, the members of this small group (people of great character and virtue – philosophers in a word) have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they’ve also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they’d perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone.” The implication is clear that for time immemorial, people of great character stay away from political leadership out of fear of being torn to pieces by the wolves involved in it or perhaps worse, becoming a wolf themselves. Epstein uses Mitch Daniels as an example of a man of great character who stayed away from politics for the reason that Plato outlines above.
More chillingly, Plato uses his writings in Republic to give voice to Socrates’ opinion that of all forms of government, democracies are most prone to giving way to tyrants, as that form of government is most likely to succumb to the majority elevating a tyrant. The tyrant in turn promotes members of this class to bodyguards and sycophants who allow them to create and hold on to more powers that are subsequently used to confiscate and redistribute wealth back to the majority, further entrenching this majority party in power. In Socrates’ estimation, the careful balance of a democracy that gives way to tyranny is when those that would protect freedom cease to have virtue and give themselves over to excessive vice and hedonism. A class of people (Socrates derisively calls them idlers) gains power due to their forcefulness and loudness (seeing the parallels here to current politics?) who unite behind a leader willing to advocate their views. Socrates likens such a leader to a wolf who is willing to spill kindred blood and justify it as necessary to get power in order to address wrongs done historically. Thus, acts of evil and vulgarity have their excuses. The tyrant eventually suppresses dissent and any form opposition is not tolerated. Eventually the wolf likely even turns on those he purported to be helping originally on the path to power. Once the blood spills, it can’t be stopped.
While I am not jumping to a dramatic conclusion that current Presidential candidates are the personification of the tyrant wolf so described in the discourse above, I do think Plato’s Republic has some tremendously useful and relevant warnings for American society and the path to devolving into such tyrannies. I don’t believe that America has some preternatural destiny to keep our grand experiment in self-governance going perpetually absent the will and the requisite virtues of the people to keep it going. While our institutions are more durable than countries in Eastern Europe or Latin America, I don’t believe they are absolutely unassailable, especially if the majority of the population are not inclined to defend them. I do believe that if we continue to elevate political leaders that are of weak virtue and character that under the right conditions we could devolve into the dystopian tyranny that Plato describes. As Plato writes, the tyrant comes to power because in every society there are a subset of people that perpetuate evil and wish to do evil to others and wish to extract wealth and natural power from others through the force of government. In well-governed societies, these evil and mindless people become petty people of little repute, perhaps even criminals. They may become successful money-makers, but Plato is careful to point out that making money is not to be confused with virtue. In a place where there is no regard for virtue and poorly governed societies, tyrants are elevated to the leadership by force of will of the majority.
Astonishingly and with incredible prescience and similarity to today’s politics, in describing the nature of a would-be tyrant, Socrates explains that they are, “those whose nature is filled with fears and erotic love of all kinds… isn’t this harvest of evils a measure of the difference between a tyrannical man who is badly governed on the inside – whom you judged to be most wretched just now, and one who doesn’t love a private life but is compelled by some chance to be a tyrant, who tries to rule others when he can’t even control himself. He’s just like an exhausted body without any self-control, which instead of living privately, is compelled to compete and fight with other bodies all its life…In truth, and whatever some people may think, a real tyrant is really a slave, compelled to engage in the worst kind of fawning, slavery, and pandering to the worst kind of people. He’s far from satisfying his desires in any way that is clear – if one happens to know that one must study his whole soul – that he’s in the greatest need of most things and truly poor. And if indeed his state is like that of the city he rules, then he’s full of fear, convulsions, and pains throughout his life… And we’ll also attribute to the man what we mentioned before, namely, that he is inevitably envious, untrustworthy, unjust, friendless impious, host and nurse to every kind of vice, and that his ruling makes him even more so. And because of all of these, he is extremely unfortunate and goes on to make those near him like himself.”
These are powerful words of warning to the citizens of democracy and predict our turning to savagery and mediocrity in our political leaders and why we lack in the truly gifted of great moral character.
As I have mentioned in other posts, I am making my way through Mary Beard’s remarkably readable account of Roman history, SPQR. Beard has the unique talent of bringing ancient history forward and modernizing it and making it tremendously relatable to modern times while maintaining the integrity of the critical historical elements. One of the remarkable anecdotes that Beard draws upon is the assassination of the Emperor Gaius, also commonly known as Caligula (which loosely translates into “Bootikins” on account of the footies he has as a child, making it a nickname that Gaius actually rather disliked). In the aftermath of this event, Beard chronicles how the Roman Senate took to the Temple of Jupiter, a highly revered and symbolic place for Romans of the time, and, as Beard states, “exchanged fine words about the end of political slavery and the return of liberty.” Calculating that it had been about 100 years since the end of freedom, one of them delivered a stirring speech on the need to return to Republican ideals. While admitting that he was too young to see the true Republic in its old form, he claimed to see with his own eyes ‘the evils with which tyrannies fill the state. No despot is set over you now who can get away with ruining the city…what recently nurtured the tyranny was nothing other than our inaction…Weakened by the pleasure of peace we learned to live like slaves….Our first duty now is to give the highest possible honors to those who killed the tyrant.”
Unfortunately for the speaker, one observer in the crowd noticed that he was wearing the signet ring that featured the face of Gaius on it, a symbol of sycophantic loyalty to the Emperor, and proceeded to rip the ring from his finger. The entire spectacle completely undermined the eloquent speech he had just delivered. As Beard indicates, the Jewish historian Josephus hinted in his writings at the time that, “anyone who could loudly advocate a return to Republican rule while sporting the emperor’s portrait on his ring did not understand what Republican rule was about.”
I use this as a parallel for the current state of the American polity and our lost sense of what actually makes America great. As the author of a blog post The Jacobins of the Right states, “There is something almost Jacobin – and thus deeply unconservative – about the idea that a virtuous, plain-speaking, authentic outsider can just step into politics and fix everything, and that when all is done, the nation as a whole will be regenerated. Or great again. Or something quite like it. There is something equally Jacobin, and unconservative, about the idea that our country or any other needs to be radically remade.” This is not just about the current presidential election, although it is certainly a symptom of the disease, in my mind, modern Americans have forgotten, or were never really taught, what made America great in the first place. The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence embodies the greatness of what the American Republic aspired to be:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..
What was unique about this incredible endeavor was a paradigm shift from paternalistic aristocratic government structures that predominated the globe at that time and indeed throughout the vast majority of history to one where individuals had unassailable rights and that government existed by the sole consent of the governed. While the United States founding fathers could look to examples of the Athenian democracy, Roman Republican era, and writings from classical liberal (mostly) English philosophers such as John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and David Hume, for the most part they were building and executing on something entirely new. It would not have escaped their (or the rest of the world’s) notice that those previous rare examples from Rome and Greece were ultimately flawed and doomed to failure.
As a bulwark against those flaws and with additional wisdom provided by the troubles of the Articles of Confederation period, the U.S. Constitution weaved together a tapestry of government checks and balances across not only the legislative, executive, and judicial branches but also across the central federal government and state governments. While I could make much of this artfully wise construct of checks and balances across government institutions, suffice it to say that by its very inherent design the U.S. Constitution was purposefully constructed to make rapid and dramatic change very difficult and yield to the less efficient incremental and slow changes that are reached by overwhelming support and consensus. For anyone that doubts this, make the Federalist Papers authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay your next reading project. A less talked about but equally important nature of the American construct was combining the government checks and balances with elements of an indirect democracy as a form of population oversight of the government; or, in other words – the consent of the governed was never intended to be ‘the majority votes, the majority rules, the majority rides roughshod over the losing minority’. It is critical to note that this was not direct democracy, as the founding fathers were afraid of mob mentality, or what the French aristocrat and prescient writer Alexis de Tocqueville would coin as “the tyranny of the majority” in his observations of America in Democracy in America.
There seem to be two competing populist strains in American politics these days – one is of a reliance on a single man to somehow ‘make us great again’ by, as the author of the Jacobin blog puts it, “cranky protectionist math that just doesn’t add up.” The other is a naive belief that we can somehow stop a “rigged” system (one of Bernie Sanders favorite terms) by consolidating much more power into the hands of government and create a “fair” society by ironically confiscating wealth from the minority and redistributing it to the minority. These political forces of authoritarian machismo and tyranny of the majority to trample on the rights of an outvoted minority would not have been a surprise to the founding fathers, who did everything they could to try to prevent this type of descent in their founding government charters. For the American people who mistakenly believe that their support of a would-be despot who can get things done by the sheer dint of force due to his leadership and personality and that this is somehow consistent with American greatness, the echoes of the Roman senator droning on about Republican greatness while wearing the Emperor’s portrait begin to ring a loud clarion call.
In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville prophetically states that, “Governments usually perish from impotence or from tyranny. In the former case, their power escapes from them; it is wrested from their grasp in the latter. Many observers who have witnessed the anarchy of democratic states, have imagined that the government of those states was naturally weak and impotent. The truth is, that, when war is once begun between parties, the government loses control over society. But I do not think that a democratic power is naturally without force or resources; say, rather, that it is almost always by the abuse of its force, and the misemployment of its resources, that it becomes a failure. Anarchy is almost always produced by its tyranny or its mistakes, but not by want of its strength.’
Those bidding for stronger and more effective and decisive government are missing the point of America and are drawing the wrong conclusions. Our government is not without power and it certainly isn’t weak and in need of a saviour. We don’t need more government or more tyranny that I believe both a Trump or Sanders presidency would bring about in different forms. We need greater individual freedoms, less government, less laws so that the rule of law can be adhered to and respected, and a much greater veneration and knowledge of our founding charters and how government is supposed to function and the people’s role within it. Without these forces, the de Tocqueville prophecy of descent into anarchy is ever closer at hand.
My dear friend Adam Goldman, who is an active member of many conservative and Republican organizations (you can see his impressive credentials below the article), has contributed the following article that I believe readers of The Gymnasium will appreciate. Adam is an astute political observer and defender of the Republican Party and its historic big-tent compromising approach that he defends as a natural and necessary component of Federalism and American values. While the libertarian-leaning purist in me personally wants to push the party into one of much more limited government and classical liberal directions, Adam makes excellent observations on the value of the party that exists today, of the two-party system, and illustrates that even the hero Reagan compromised and performed actions inimical to populists on the right. Further, he draws a remarkable contrast between the optimistic and moral approach of Reagan to the brash authoritarianism of Trump. I hope my readers will enjoy this article and comment on it and I hope you value and look forward to contributions from Adam and others for diverse viewpoints in the days to come.
Trump’s Erosion of the Legacy of Reagan and the Roots of Modern Authoritarianism
Splinter movements from our twin political parties are nothing new in American history. While it is of utmost concern, considerable examination into Donald Trump’s highly questionable personal and business backgrounds have been undertaken elsewhere and need no further recitation herein. I examine and compare, rather, the rise of the Trump phenomenon to that of the Reagan revolution, through the lens of America’s late 20th century history political culture as well as its Constitutional and partisan framework.
The Republican and Democratic parties are by nature very large businesses that encompass a very diverse range of both the religious and the secular, including both labor and business, and other movements, spread across a continent. For America to enjoy relative benefit of the stability of a two-party system, it must out of necessity subordinate the purist impulses of certain factions within these diverse coalitions. This simple logic of 2 + 0, and not 2+1 or 2+2, is not embraced by many who revile their “establishment” leadership within their respective parties. These rejectionists are imbued with an authoritarian impulse, and when its spokesman meets with a base of support that crescendos in a positive feedback loop, the results can be inherently destabilizing, as the GOP is witnessing this year with the rise of Trump.
Trump has very successfully redirected the Tea Party angst of 2010 from Obama against the Republican party as a whole. By comparison, in 1968 violent counter-cultural and student movements joined to force their way into Eugene McCarthy’s coronation, a moderate Democrat. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy earlier unglued the Democratic party, temporarily. It became unstable and dysfunctional. The result was the election of their arch-nemesis, Richard Nixon, a flight to stability and a symbol of strength for most voters. The uprising on the furthest flank from the center of the party led to a result in direct contradiction to its stated goals.
In 1996, Pat Buchanan led a similar, but much more orderly, rejectionist insurrection within the GOP. Frustrated with the dilution of Reagan’s supposedly pure vision of conservatism, millions flocked to his side. Memories fade quickly though: Reagan made numerous compromises with Tip O’Neill, his famous “six o’clock” friend, and Democratic Speaker of the House, in order to secure broad tax cuts and increased defense spending. Reagan in turn agreed to raise gas taxes, eliminated the IRS deduction for auto loan interest, raised the Social Security eligibility age, incurred massive deficits, barely made a dent to social welfare spending, lost 200 Marines in a terrorist bombing during a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, and signed the 1986 law granting amnesty to illegal aliens without guarantees regarding promised enhanced border security. Republicans under Newt Gingrich made corrective progress over the course of the decade following Reagan’s tenure by reforming welfare and reducing deficits dramatically. This is the essence of the process of America’s constitutional process, which always defies quick solutions, but if permitted its arc always bends toward limiting the Federal power. Nevertheless, President Clinton quickly dispatched his GOP rival Senator Bob Dole, whose campaign emerged gravely wounded from the purist Buchanan-led primary uprising.
The GOP benefited dramatically in 2010 from the Tea Party’s grassroots coalition, which turned out millions of voters only four years following the GOP’s huge losses in the 2006 Congressional elections. For all of the Tea Party’s purity of purpose toward resurrecting a second Reagan Revolution, it forgot its own history: the necessary compromises that Reagan strategically agreed to, and the failed insurgence of Buchanan, who prevailed in a tactical victory but lost the war. It is of no surprise that Pat Buchanan several years ago touted the effectiveness of the “Christian” Vladimir Putin of Russia. Putin in turn, stated his recent admiration for Trump, whom the latter has not yet disavowed.
The roots of authoritarianism are neither peculiar to the right or the left. Trump may be its spokesman on the right today, however tomorrow it is all but certain that the tides of unwritten history will give rise to another on the left. The result is always certain in a two-party political environment, which is that the results of its efforts are always self-defeating.
The banality of Trump is a reflection of the temperament of his supporters, who have neither the disposition nor inclination to consider the long-arc of Constitutional lawmaking. In fact, the very words “Constitutional lawmaking” provoke disdain and anti-“establishment” mockery from his supporters. They view compromise as not only unnecessary but anathematic, despite all mathematical proofs regarding veto overrides, a bicameral legislature, and an independently elected executive (unlike European parliamentarian systems). Comparisons to the rise of Hitler in 1930s Germany are exaggerated, but the impulse to authoritarianism is by no means to be conveniently ignored, despite America being the oldest democracy. The renown historical philosopher Hanna Arendt examined the rise of the Third Reich closely and concluded that in spite of Germany’s position as the most highly technical and educated society in continental Europe, a motivated and large plurality of its citizens were drawn to Hitler’s crudity and demagoguery. How did this occur?
Hitler exploited four themes that motivated ordinary Germans: the loss of the German middle class’ purchasing power due to hyperinflation from post-war debt, the loss of international prestige and status (due to the Versailles Treaty’s disarmament clauses), and impatience with the new, inexperienced fledgling democracy in Berlin which could not produce a consensus regarding which policies ought to address these crises. The fourth theme tied together the previous three, which blamed these crises squarely upon the “establishment”. Hitler further stoked fears of an establishment “conspiracy” against ordinary Germans by gradually amplifying xenophobic rhetoric of a Jewish fifth-column, which reflected old mythologies from the Middle Ages which still resonated.
The goodwill of the majority of America’s people and the strength of its community organizations, whose Protestant and Catholic spokesman have weighed in recently against Trump, all but guarantee that the horrors of the Reich will never be repeated here. However, for the Tea Party to successfully overcome its impulse to authoritarianism and regain its focus on continuing the Reagan revolution, it must re-embrace the Constitutional process, and unequivocally denounce demagoguery. It begins with an honest self-assessment of its own disregard for Reagan’s principles, which follow.
Reagan’s speech, manners, and civility always shamed his occasionally crude, low-minded opponents with a forceful appeal to moral reasoning. For Reagan, the goal was never “winning” at the expense of anyone. For Reagan, winning was a tide that lifted all boats, including those of the left. For Trump, personal wealth is the goal for not only himself but for his supporters. Reagan, on the other hand, felt the tide of rising wealth that lifted all boats was merely a means to an end. The end was not wealth, but security and a realization that God desires to bless those that are His. That financial security can then be used to bless the world and lift millions out of poverty and oppression. Reagan believed that America should lead in that effort. Trump has cast his vision for America as merely one of acquiring more goods and personal wealth and self-satisfaction, a shallow appeal at best to consumerism. By contrast, Jesus taught an entirely different paradigm of the reason for wealth, as a means to a different end altogether. At the risk of hyperbole, we can conclude that Reagan’s economic vision is consistent with that of Jesus of Nazareth, although I’m sure Reagan’s humility would most certainly preclude his agreement to such notions.
For the foregoing reasons, we can safely conclude that the character and values of Reaganism stand in diametric opposition to that of Trump. What is more, we can rest assured that Ronald Reagan himself would very likely have absolutely nothing to do with someone of the persona of Donald Trump.
Adam Goldman is current Board Member and former Vice President of Florida Right to Life, a founding member of the Center-Right Coalition of Central Florida, serves on the Central Board of James Madison Institute, and served on the statewide Florida steering committee of the Mitt Romney campaign.
Around 100 AD, the Roman satirist Juvenal wrote that, “The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things – bread and circuses!”
The simplified quip of “bread and circuses” has since been used to decry and satirize mob mentality coupled with the loss of civic virtue and education and the ability of demagogues to capture the hearts and minds of the uneducated rabble through nothing more than food and entertainment. I dare say little has changed in 2,000 years, and this same satirical critique could be leveled at society that supports the man whose recent victory speech included the statement, “I love the poorly educated…” A part of me wants to be in shock. A part of me wants to believe that the elevation of such crassness is not possible in this country. On the other hand, I think of the general coarseness of our society that devotes much more time to keeping up with the Kardashians and the 20th season of The Bachelor than keeping up with the level of education and morality required to uphold a democratic republic and I can’t help but draw the conclusion that perhaps this is the government that we deserve.
Ding Ding Ding! The Coyote Blog sums up my feelings on the matter of the Scalia replacement. I am particularly fond of this statement:
“….the very fact a Supreme Court nomination is so politically radioactive is a sign of a basic governmental failure in and of itself. The libertarian argument is that by giving the government so much power to intervene in so many ways that creates winners and losers by legislative diktat, we have raised the stakes of minutes points of law to previously unimaginable levels. In a world where the government is not empowered to micro-manage our lives, a Supreme Court nomination would be as interesting as naming the postmaster general.”
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